Five killed in weekend traffic accidents

Heather Rawlyk and Eric Leake

Monday, Oct. 25, 2004 | 9:45 a.m.

The traffic death toll in the valley continued to climb through the weekend with at least five people killed in the last four days.

A 46-year-old Las Vegas man was driving a 2001 Harley-Davidson motorycle while apparently "horsing around" with another motorcycle south on Torrey Pines Drive at 12:50 a.m. Sunday when the two motorcycles sideswiped each other, Metro Police said.

The man driving the Harley-Davidson crossed into an intersection at Spring Mountain Road and collided with the right side of a 2000 Saturn, driven by Alberto Bruno-Martinez, 26, of Las Vegas.

Martinez was unable to stop his car before running over the motorcyclist, police said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene.

A man and woman were killed Saturday morning in a hit-and-run near the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

The two were walking east on a sidewalk alongside Flamingo Road at Cambridge Street at about 10:15 a.m. when a 1997 Acura rear-ended a 1993 Chevrolet Cavalier, causing the Chevrolet to rotate clockwise and jump the curb, police said.

The driver of the Acura kept going and the Chevrolet, driven by 18-year-old Zaida Limbag of Las Vegas collided with the two pedestrians and then continued sideways into a wash, landing on its roof, police said.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The woman and Limbag were taken to University Medical Center, where the pedestrian was pronounced dead, police said.

Limbag was treated for minor injuries and released.

Police are looking for a white 1997 Acura 2-door hatchback with Illinois license plate 5073307, and anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 385-5555 or Detective Dennis Magill at 229-3317.

On Thursday afternoon, two people died in separate rollover accidents on rain-soaked Blue Diamond Highway.

Jamie Quoss, 31, of Pahrump, was driving with her husband north on the highway, 23 miles west of Las Vegas, at about 3 p.m. when she lost control of her Honda, Nevada Highway Patrol said.

Neither she nor her husband, John Quoss, 33, wore seat belts, according to a Highway Patrol press release. John Quoss was thrown from the car and died. Jamie Quoss was taken to University Medical Center with serious injuries.

She told troopers that she was lighting a cigarette when she became distracted, drifted, and over-corrected, Trooper Loy Hixson said.

Twenty minutes later a 1994 Chevy Blazer traveling the opposite direction from farther down the same road also rolled, the statement from the Highway Patrol noted. The driver, Stacie Lynn Gittelman, 39, of Pahrump, died at the scene of the crash, 12 miles west of Vegas.

Hixson said it was only coincidental that the accidents occurred within miles and minutes of one another.