The County Coroner’s office has identified the three victims in two fatal collisions in the Morongo Basin Wednesday. At about 4:00 a.m., the CHP received a 911 call regarding a 3-vehicle collision on State Route 247, just north of Alderman Road in Landers. Douglas Barnes, 37, of Victorville, was driving a pick-up truck towing a trailer southbound on Old Woman Springs Road, when the pick-up truck crossed over the broken yellow lines and collided with a 2004 green Jeep Liberty, driven by Joshua Robbins, 36, of Joshua Tree. The collision sent the Jeep out of control and it burst into flames. Robbins and his two passengers got out of the Jeep safely. Barnes’ truck continued southbound and hit a blue 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer head-on. The two men inside the Lancer—driver Clifford George Lopez, 21, of Yucca Valley, and passenger, Samuel Hernandez, 52, of Desert Hot Springs, were pronounced dead at the scene.
Then at 8:23 a.m., the CHP received a 911 call regarding a vehicle collision on Twentynine Palms Highway, just east of Rotary Way in Joshua Tree. A U-Haul truck crashed into the rear of a semi-truck near Copper Mountain College. David Lewis Hiebel, a 68-year-old resident of Joshua Tree, was pronounced dead on scene at 9:08 a.m. The California Highway Patrol is investigating the collision.
