Man convicted in deadly Redwood City street racing crash dies in jail
Man convicted in deadly street racing crash dies in jail
A man convicted of vehicular manslaughter in the deaths of a Peninsula couple during a street racing crash was found dead in his jail cell Saturday afternoon, according to the San Mateo County coroner.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - A man convicted of vehicular manslaughter in the deaths of a Peninsula couple during a street racing crash was found dead in his jail cell Saturday afternoon, according to the San Mateo County coroner.
Kyle Harrison had served less than a month of his eight-year prison sentence.
Found unresponsive
What we know:
Harrison, 25, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Maple Street Correctional Center in Redwood City at 4:50 p.m. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
The coroner's office has yet to determine a cause of death.
The San Mateo County District Attorney's Office, the county Coroner's Office and sheriff's detectives are conducting independent investigations into the circumstances around Harrison's death.
Officials said the cell had received a routine safety inspection shortly before Harrison's body was discovered.
The collision
The backstory:
Harrison was one of two drivers involved in a 2022 street race that killed Greg Ammen and Grace Spiridon, parents of twin girls who were seven years old at the time.
Harrison and Cesar Morales, who was then 17 years old, were racing down El Camino Real on Nov. 4 when Morales broadsided the family's vehicle, which was making a left turn onto Finger Avenue. Spirodon and Ammen's daughters were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. The family was returning home from dinner with their grandparents when the collision occurred.
Harrison and Morales were both arrested in the weeks following the crash.
Harrison in October pleaded no contest to two counts of felony vehicular manslaughter and one count of felony street racing.
He was sentenced to eight years in prison on Feb. 25, but the case was continued to May 7 for a restitution hearing, according to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.
The judge ordered that Harrison not be transported to state prison until May 8 so that he could be present for that hearing, Wagstaffe said.
Meanwhile, Morales served two years and two months in juvenile hall.
He turned 20 in January, at which time he was sentenced to 90 days of home detention.
Relative slams 90-day home-detention sentence in street-racing crash that orphaned twin girls
A then-teenage street racer who killed a couple in Redwood City and left their twin daughters without parents got 90 days of electronic monitoring with his parents, a sentence a relative of the victims is too light.
Relatives ‘dissatisfied’
Big picture view:
Spirodon's sister, who, alongside her husband, is now raising her twin nieces, criticized Morales' sentence as being too lenient.
"It's also very concerning, the message it sends to other teen drivers, as well as street racers, especially as street racing has increased," Spiridon said following Morales' sentencing earlier this year.
"I equate it to school shootings. Until we make changes, it's going to keep happening, and it's going to increase. I equate a car to a weapon, just like a gun. You can treat a car like a weapon," Spiridon said.