The front section of the 2019 McLaren involved in a fiery fatal crash that killed a car influencer and a model in Irvine in September abruptly ignited at a secure tow facility in Costa Mesa on Wednesday, the Irvine Police Department said in a news release.
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The stored McLaren’s wreckage is what remains of the crash that left the driver, South OC Cars and Coffee co-founder James Wehr, 27, and the passenger, 22-year-old Alexis “Lexi” Kramer of Florida, dead.
At around 12:20 a.m. on Sept. 13, the car was traveling at a “high rate of speed” on Culver Drive north of Deerfield Avenue, police previously said, when it hit a curb, crashed into a tree, split in half, and burst into flames.
Wehr’s widow, Emma Wehr, has since hired an attorney to look into the fatal collision, particularly why a “significant amount of water was on the roadway on an otherwise clear night.”
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Initial findings into the fire by Costa Mesa Fire and Rescue investigators, backed up by video surveillance, show the fire started spontaneously. No person was present with the vehicle when the fire ignited, the released portion of the video shows.
The video appears to show sparks before the fire, which ultimately fills the facility with so much smoke that the fire is no longer visible on the camera.
The investigations into the collision and the spontaneous fire remain under investigation.
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