Huntington Beach : Scantily Clad Woman Arrested After Crash

A scantily clad Huntington Beach woman driving with her small daughter sped the wrong way on a one-way street and crashed through a Metro Rail construction site in Los Angeles, injuring two workers and the child, police said Sunday.

Bonnie Althouse, 31, was booked on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs, possibly amphetamines, and child endangerment, Los Angeles Police Officer Roger Wilson said.

Her 2-year-old daughter, whom Althouse pulled out of her wrecked car and then allegedly left at the crash site, was taken to County-USC Medical Center for treatment of head cuts.

The foreman of the Metro Rail construction site at 4th Street and Broadway suffered major internal injuries and another worker suffered a broken leg in the episode shortly before midnight Saturday, Wilson said. Neither worker was immediately identified.

Wilson said Althouse was wearing only a slip and panties when she careened the wrong way down 4th Street, first crashing into a vehicle stopped at a traffic light, then into a generator and a backhoe tractor at the construction site, sending the equipment spinning into the two workers. Her car then hit a dirt embankment and burst into flames.

Wilson said Althouse got out of the car with her daughter, then broke away from a worker who tried to stop her as she dropped the child. She lost her slip in the struggle with the worker, but ran away and disappeared into a locked parking building. Officers, who worked for over an hour to cut a padlock and get inside, found her in a first-floor phone booth, he said.

Police believe Wilson had left her Huntington Beach home about 2 p.m. Saturday, looking for her boyfriend. She suffered a broken nose in the crash and was booked into the jail ward at County-USC Medical Center.