By Khalida Sarwari
The Santa Barbara County coroner’s bureau today released the identities of six San Francisco residents, including five foreign national students, killed in a crash last month on U.S. Highway 101 in Santa Barbara.
The six people were identified as 30-year-old Brandt Martin Cannici of San Francisco; 20-year-old Ruzanna Movsesovna Militonyan of Russia; 25-year-old Elif Yilmaz of Turkey; and 20-year-old Nicia Chloe Oberle, 25-year-old Angelique Barbara Rolin and 18-year-old Constance
Vadepied of France.
The crash happened around 6:35 p.m. on Feb. 19 when the driver of a 1996 Toyota Land Cruiser that contained seven people, including the six victims, lost control and drifted into the dirt center divider, according to the CHP.
The vehicle rolled, struck a tree and caught fire, the CHP reported.
The crash was so severe that the coroner’s bureau had to use dental records to identify the bodies.
The case was further complicated because five of the victims were from out of the country, according to Sgt. Gregg Weitzman of the coroner’s bureau.
“Our detectives worked through foreign embassies to contact the victims’ families,” Weitzman said in a prepared statement. The families provided medical and dental records that then had to be translated into English.
CHP Officer Eliseo Alarcon said at least some of the students attended the Embassy Center for English Studies in San Francisco.
The CHP reported that the group had been en route from San Francisco to Los Angeles when the crash happened.
No one from the school was available to comment today.