2-Car Collision Near Base Kills 5, Hurts 3 : Antelope Valley: All of the dead were in a sedan that was broadsided after running a stop sign. The toll is called the highest in memory.

Five people were killed and three injured Wednesday in a two-car collision near Edwards Air Force Base, the most deaths in one Antelope Valley crash in memory, a California Highway Patrol officer said.

A Dodge sedan carrying seven people was westbound on Avenue E when it ran a stop sign and drove into the path of a BMW heading south on 120th Street East, authorities said. The BMW broadsided the Dodge on the passenger side, knocking the Dodge over onto its roof.

All the dead--one man, two women and two girls--were in the Dodge, CHP Officer Mike Nemback said.

“I’ve been here for 13 years and I can’t remember a five-fatality accident,” Nemback said.

A woman and a boy also riding in the Dodge were flown by helicopter to Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, where they were listed in serious condition late Wednesday.

A helicopter also flew Clement King, of Lancaster, the driver of the BMW, to Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center in Lancaster, where he was listed in stable condition with a broken ankle. Authorities said they believe King is an employee at the Air Force base who was on his way home from work.

The identities of the Dodge’s occupants were unavailable Wednesday night. The state Department of Motor Vehicles said the car was registered to a Clelia M. Munoz, 39, of Lancaster.

Authorities on Wednesday said they believed at least some of the occupants of the Dodge were not wearing seat belts, although no one was ejected during the crash.

Accidents are not rare at the desert crossroads common to the eastern Antelope Valley, authorities said.

In August, 1991, two people were seriously injured when a van transporting retarded workers collided with a car east of Lancaster. None of the eight passengers in the van operated by Desert Haven, a Lancaster vocational placement center for mentally retarded adults, were seriously hurt. They were returning to the center from groundskeeper jobs at Edwards Air Force Base when the accident occurred at 110th Street East.

In an unrelated incident, a carload of students headed for Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster collided with a school bus bound for the same campus in September, 1991, injuring the bus driver and seven students from both vehicles, authorities said.

The crash occurred on Avenue J west of 40th Street East in Lancaster when a boy driving the car let it drift about four feet across the road’s center line as he tried to help one of his three passengers with his seat belt, according to CHP officers.

Most recently, a head-on collision in the town of Littlerock last Sunday killed a 5-month-old boy, a 7-year-old girl and a 31-year-old man, Cuauhtemoc Mujica, when a car was struck by another car that had drifted across the center line on California 138, authorities said.