Redondo Beach police have identified the driver of a vehicle that fatally struck a pedestrian on Torrance Boulevard last week as an 85-year-old Los Angeles woman.
Investigators are still trying to determine why Lois Claiborne veered off the street in a white Toyota Camry traveling westbound in the right lane of the street before noon Oct. 18. The vehicle swerved at the corner of Francisca Avenue, striking 48-year-old Yongsheng Hu of China, who was walking on the sidewalk. The car landed on its roof in a parking lot after hitting a short cinder block wall.
Hu was pronounced dead at the scene and Claiborne was taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police have not announced charges against her and are still piecing together what happened, though investigators have ruled out several potential factors, said Sgt. Shawn Freeman of the Redondo Beach Police Department.
“We don’t think speed, drugs or alcohol were involved,” Freeman said. “What we know preliminarily is she was trying to avoid traffic backed up in that No. 2 lane of Torrance Boulevard.”
Traffic investigators will analyze skid marks, witness accounts and any potential mechanical failures to determine why the vehicle swerved before they decide whether to forward the case to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Freeman said.
Claiborne has a clean driving record, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.
A woman with the same name is identified as a local nun in two regional newsletters of the Daughters of Mary and Joseph, an international religious order with a South Bay presence. The order founded the Mary & Joseph Retreat Center in Rancho Palos Verdes more than 50 years ago, but the facility is now operated by a nonprofit. Nuns still live in a residence on the Crest Road property. Calls made there were not returned.
A Lois Claiborne also is listed in a March 1951 article in the campus newspaper of Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles as one of several former students who would soon receive their habits.
Claiborne has an address at a trailer park in Los Angeles. Before that, her address was an in-home Christian preschool in Santa Barbara.