GILROY
– Steven Due missed his graduation last Tuesday from Mount
Madonna High School. Instead, he was in the intensive care unit at
Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.
GILROY – Steven Due missed his graduation last Tuesday from Mount Madonna High School. Instead, he was in the intensive care unit at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center.
Due was a passenger in a car that Jose Ortiz III drove into a telephone pole on Buena Vista Avenue, northeast of Gilroy, the night of June 2. Ortiz was drunk at the time and will be charged with felony DUI, according to the California Highway Patrol.
While one medical helicopter flew Ortiz to the trauma center at San Jose Medical Center, another flew Due to Valley Med. Both 18-year-old Gilroy residents were in critical condition after the wreck, hospital officials said. CHP officers said Ortiz had bleeding on the brain and facial fractures. Due’s mother, Karen Due, said her son suffered a collapsed lung.
“He had tubes in his head, tubes in his throat,” she said.
Steven Due was transferred Thursday to Kaiser Santa Teresa Hospital.
“He’s in and out, in and out,” Karen Due said Friday. “He’s still under sedation”
Ortiz, meanwhile, was transferred to Valley Med last Tuesday and discharged from there Thursday. His family could not be contacted as of press time.
Ortiz left Mount Madonna, Gilroy’s alternative and continuation high school, in October.
Another 18-year-old Gilroy male was in the car with Ortiz and Due but fled the scene, CHP officers said. Gilroy police believe they found this young man Thursday when they arrested and booked Jesse Salinas Jr., a former Mount Madonna student – who school officials say dropped out about two months ago – on suspicion of felony hit-and-run.
Police said Salinas confessed he was in the car at the time of the wreck. They released him without charges, to be interviewed by CHP officers at a later date.
Karen Due said Ortiz and Salinas had been drinking that night, but her son did not.
“They both said that my son wasn’t drinking at all,” she said. “They were giving my son a ride.”
CHP officers said Ortiz was ejected from the car after splitting the power pole in two, but Karen Due said she heard Ortiz was leaving the car to flee with Salinas when he collapsed, unconscious.
“They left my son in there,” she said.
Meanwhile, Karen Due said, Mount Madonna staff and students have been “very supportive.”
“They’ve been always calling, making sure he’s OK,” she said. “He’s had a lot of visitors. … A lot of people care over there.”
Peter Crowley covers public safety for The Dispatch. You can reach him at pc******@************ch.com or 847-7109.
