Costa Mesa school car attack
1999 murder in California, United States
On May 3, 1999, a Santa Ana man drove into a preschool playground in Costa Mesa, California, killing two students and injuring four others as well as a teacher's aide.
Incident
The driver, Steven Allen Abrams, drove his 1967 Cadillac into the playground of the Southcoast Early Childhood Learning Center on May 3, 1999. He drove the vehicle through the chain link fence around the playground and aimed for those in the playground. Witnesses stated Abrams drove past the playground and then U-turned back towards the playground before he accelerated into the schoolyard at a speed of 60 to 75 miles per hour (97 to 121 km/h). He continued through the playground, before he crashed into a tree, and trapped two boys and one girl underneath his vehicle.
Victims
The two deceased victims were Brandon Wiener, 3 years old and Sierra Soto, 4 years old. Another four students and teacher's aid Danielle Diaz were injured in the crash.
Perpetrator
Steven Allen Abrams was arrested and initially charged with assault with a deadly weapon. He was convicted of two counts of murder, five counts of attempted murder and two counts of attempted voluntary manslaughter; which also include a couple that were rammed by Abrams prior to the playground being targeted. In a taped confession that was played for jurors during the trial Abrams stated; "I was executing them....as many as I could get.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q60763314. Authority coordinates are 33.636, -117.912. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1999 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Costa Mesa school car attack” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.