Left: This booking photo released by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department shows Anurag Chandra, 42, of Corona, Ca., Monday, Jan. 20, 2020. A jury found Chandra guilty Friday, April 28, 2023, in the killings of three teenage boys after they played a doorbell-ringing prank on him in 2020. (Riverside County Sheriff’s Department via AP, File). Right: An officer with the California Highway Patrol’s (CHP) Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team (MAIT) investigates the scene of a deadly crash in the Temescal Valley, south of Corona, Calif., Monday, Jan. 20, 2020. A jury found a Southern California man guilty Friday, April 28, 2023, in the killings of three teenage boys after they played a doorbell-ringing prank on him in 2020. (Watchara Phomicinda/The Orange County Register via AP, File).
A 45-year-old man in California will spend the rest of his life behind bars for running down a car full of kids who rang his doorbell and ran away — also known as ding-dong-ditch — ramming their car off the road and killing three 16-year-old boys.
Riverside County Judge Valerie Navarro on Friday ordered Anurag Chandra to serve the maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole for the 2020 killings of teens Jacob Ivascu, Drake Ruiz, and Daniel Hawkins, authorities announced.
A Riverside County jury in April took only three hours to find Chandra guilty on three counts of murder, prosecutors said in a press release.
“The lives of countless families will never be the same because of one man’s anger, callousness and outrageous conduct, and I am grateful to Judge Navarro for imposing the maximum sentence in this case,” Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said in a statement following the sentencing hearing.
According to the press release, the deadly crash happened on the night of Jan. 19, 2020, on Temescal Canyon Road, about 60 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Ivascu, Ruiz, and Hawkins were all killed, while Sergio Campusano, the 18-year-old driver of the Toyota Prius and two boys, ages 13 and 14, were seriously injured in the crash but ultimately survived.
The boys were having a sleepover and ultimately dared one of the friends to do a “doorbell ditch,” prosecutors said. The victims and their companions then drove to a nearby house, according to an investigation by the California Highway Patrol.
Upon arriving at Chandra’s home on Modjeska Summit Road, one of the boys rang the doorbell of a home and ran back to the Prius. Chandra, who claimed that one of the boys flashed his buttocks before fleeing, then got into his 2019 Infinity Q50 and chased after the Prius.
As Chandra pursued the victims, he rear-ended and sideswiped the Prius until the vehicle was forced to stop. The Prius made a U-turn in an attempt to escape, but Chandra continued his pursuit, prosecutors said. Ultimately, as both vehicles approached Squaw Mountain Road, Chandra drove his Infinity at speeds reaching 99 mph before intentionally ramming his car into the back of the Prius, causing it to veer off the road and collide with a tree.
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Chandra said he did not stop or call for medical help after seeing the kids crash because he did not believe the passengers had been injured.
During the trial, Chandra testified that in the hours before the crash, he had consumed about 12 beers. He told jurors the doorbell prank made him “extremely, extremely mad.” He also claimed that his wife and daughter were inside the home at the time of the prank, and he feared for their safety.
Following his conviction for murder in April, Chandra’s defense attorney, David Wohl, told the Los Angeles Times that the conviction is a “complete overreach” and that he plans to file a motion for a new trial.
“I think that we felt worst-case scenario would be voluntary manslaughter, but we also thought we had made a great case for an acquittal outright,” Wohl told the newspaper. “The battle has just begun, as far as I’m concerned.”
Before Judge Navarro handed down the sentence, several of the victims’ family members read victim impact statements.
“Every day we sense the absence of this young man,” Craig Hawkins, Daniel Hawkins’ father, said. “The hole in our hearts and lives from the taking of our son’s life is staggering.”
In a separate case filed before the crash, Chandra also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of spousal battery and child endangerment and was sentenced to time served. He has been in custody at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside County since his arrest on the night of the crash.
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