In LA County, illegal street racing has a deadly toll
LOS ANGELES - Valentina D'Alessandro was at a party with a few girlfriends in 2013 when one of them got sick. They accepted another teenager's offer to drive them home in his red Mustang.
In a commercial area of Wilmington, at the intersection of two four-lane boulevards, a car pulled up alongside the Mustang.
The race began.
Minutes later, Valentina, 16, was dead, her body wedged in a back seat window following a crash. Police found her high school identification card at the scene.
She was one of at least 179 people killed in L.A. County since 2000 in crashes in which street racing was suspected, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of coroner's records, police reports and media accounts from 2000 to 2017.
Southern California has long been an epicenter of high-speed car culture. Wild police pursuits dominate television newscasts. The "Fast & Furious" film franchise, which many cops blame for hyping street racing, was set in Los Angeles.
Police say incidents of street racing are on the rise, driven by popular culture and the use of social media to draw contestants and evade authorities. In what racers call
