A woman who died when she drove the wrong way on a California freeway and hit another car, killing two San Diego police detectives, was a diabetic who may have become disoriented because of low blood sugar, her husband said Tuesday.
Sandra Daniels, 58, died Friday in the high-speed, head-on crash on Interstate 5 near the U.S.-Mexico border south of downtown San Diego. Her car burst into flames.
“We’re devastated,” Darrell Daniels, her husband of 33 years, told KFMB-TV in a phone interview.
The retired Navy officer said his wife had diabetes and had gone to Balboa Naval Medical Center that morning to get insulin.
“She went the wrong way, she got down there at the border, and somehow when she turned around she ended up on the wrong side (of the road),” he said. “And I believe that was because of low sugar.”
“There’s no way that she knew what she was doing,” he said.
The California Highway Patrol was still investigating the cause of the crash.
The crash also killed a married couple, Detective Ryan Park, 32, and Detective Jamie Huntley-Park, 33.
Park was a homicide detective, and Huntley-Park was assigned to the Southern Division. They had the day off, but Ryan was on call.
On Tuesday, a procession of police officers escorted the bodies of the couple from the coroner’s office to a mortuary.