Crash killed four sailors

Authorities this afternoon released the names of the four sailors killed in a high-speed car crash Saturday night in Seattle's Rainier Beach neighborhood.

The men were identified as Carlos Ivan Garcia-Son, 22; Brian Adam Lane, 26; Anthony Stephen Cox, 22; and Clinton Dale Campbell, 24, according to the King County Medical Examiner's Office. It wasn't immediately clear who was driving the car.

A Navy spokesman said all four men were assigned to the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which is normally homeported at Naval Station Everett but is currently undergoing maintenance in Bremerton.

The ship has a crew of 5,000 to 5,500 when deployed at sea. It had just returned from 5 ½ months in the Pacific.

About half the crew lives in Everett, and the others in Bremerton.

The accident happened about 8:40 p.m. Saturday in the 9500 block of Rainier Avenue South.

Witnesses estimated the car's speed at 80 to 100 mph, Sgt. Peter Ng said.

"I just heard a scraping sound. It seemed like it went on forever," said T.C. Kern, who lives in a nearby condominium and was working at his computer when the crash occurred.

"Through the trees I saw the black car. I saw the sparks and then everything went black ... The impact was unbelievable. It sounded like a train hitting the car."

Officials at the scene said the car was a 2002 BMW convertible, traveling north and passing other vehicles when it clipped a curb and knocked down the utility poll. At some point, the car went airborne, flipped over and slid on its top for about a block.

Some witnesses told police that three men were ejected, Ng said.

Ricardo Ramacho, owner of a nearby pub, heard the thump of the impact, saw the sparks and things flying down the street and said to himself: "Oh, my God, there goes a bad wreck."

Ramacho grabbed a flashlight and tossed a couple of flares onto the street.

He said he saw two bodies on the sidewalk and what appeared to be a third victim in the middle of the street.

"I was really shook up last night," Ramacho said Sunday. He closed the tavern early Saturday and went home. "I was thinking about how these people died, probably for nothing, just driving crazy."

Late Sunday morning, firefighters arrived to clean up the site.

By late Sunday afternoon, all power had been restored to the area. Two trolley lines were repaired.

Neighbors stood behind the yellow police tape soberly staring at the accident scene, wondering how anyone could drive that fast on that road.

Amid the debris was a black baseball cap embossed with the words "USS Abraham Lincoln," and two light-blue safety helmets with 72 on the side, the ship's number.

Sunday night, Pat Downs, a neighbor, brought a bouquet of white and apricot-colored gladiolus and placed them near the accident site.

"Young men died here. We don't know who they were but they deserve to be remembered," said Downs, a retired hospice nurse.

"I wanted their families to know that we honored them."

Marsha King: 206-464-2232 or mking@seattletimes.com. Reporters Tricia Duryee, Brian Alexander and Jack Broom contributed to this story.