Nearly 25 years ago today, the Santa Barbara News-Press covered one of the most horrific tragedies imaginable. An 18-year-old drove his car through a crowd of pedestrians on Sabado Tarde in Isla Vista. Four people were killed that night, and a fifth died years later.
I remember the night and morning vividly because I covered the tragedy. My editor called me about 11 p.m. to tell me that there were “four black tags” in Isla Vista. The statement was police code for fatalities. My wife, Dina, who was my girlfriend at the time, drove me to Isla Vista and dropped me off on that Friday night.
I spent the next few hours until about 3 a.m. reporting. Hundreds of people were gathered in the streets. Local and cable TV news trucks showed up. The scene itself was gruesome. Four bodies covered in tarps laid in the street. The editors ran the photo on the front page.
As a young reporter, it was the first time I had seen and covered a story like that. The next morning I returned, along with my then-colleague Scott Hadly. We knocked on doors and talked to more people as we tried to piece together what happened, how it happened and why it happened.
Hadly discovered that two people shot video of the moments immediately after the crash. He was able to view some of the immediate-aftermath footage, and we put those details into our stories that would follow.
We first found out about the situation from an editor listening to the newsroom scanner. I took the call. I was young and eager to do my job. The great News-Press photographer Steve Malone, who died in 2015, was also there that night and took photos.
That story can be found in the News-Press archives at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum and eventually digital stories online again. The amount of history contained within the sphere of the Santa Barbara News-Press is astounding. I still cover breaking news today, although sometimes it looks a little different. It’s online on our website and on our social media accounts. You’ll find some of it in our newsletter today below.
We continue to document this community’s history as best we can today, building out our team carefully, and we thank you for reading and watching.
Joshua Molina
News-Press Editor
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Former Santa Barbara City Councilman Gil Garcia, others stranded in Mexico amid unrest
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Former Santa Barbara City Councilman Gil Garcia and his wife, Marti Correa de Garcia, are among a group of Santa Barbara tourists stuck in Mexico.
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“We were advised by the hotel that it would be very dangerous to travel on highways and suggested we stay at the hotel and not go outside because the military is gathering to fight with the cartel.”
— Former Santa Barbara City Councilman Gil Garcia
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