Suddenly, a Holiday Is a Time to Grieve

With one of the twins set to be married this summer and their mother terminally ill, this was to be the last Christmas the Ammann family would share in the same home.

A holiday to cherish was destroyed Tuesday night when an assailant stabbed 23-year-old Justin Ammann to death and injured his identical twin. The brothers were headed home on the toll road in Rancho Santa Margarita after Christmas shopping. The family spent Wednesday grieving for Justin, praying for Jason Ammann’s recovery and hoping investigators find the killer.

“These are two 23-year-old children, and now one of them is gone,” said their uncle, Richard Dittmar. “If you know anything about identical twins, when one’s gone, it’s like losing your arm. You’ve never seen two boys closer in your life.”

The attack occurred after the twins, riding in Jason’s new silver Ford F250 truck, got into a shouting match with the driver of a dark pickup as the vehicles headed south on the Foothill toll road about 9:15 p.m., said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Investigators said they weren’t certain what started the argument, but it escalated as the drivers reached the end of the Santa Margarita Parkway offramp when Justin and the pickup driver got out of their trucks and approached each other.

Justin was stabbed several times in the head and chest. His brother was stabbed when he got out to help, investigators said.

Wounded and in a panic, Jason Ammann got back in the truck and sped to the Rancho Santa Margarita home the brothers shared with their parents, the uncle said. Dittmar said he drove his nephew to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, where he remains in stable condition.

“It takes about six minutes from the house [to the hospital] when you’re panicking and driving 100 mph,” the uncle said.

The mortally wounded brother later was found by a passing motorist, who notified authorities.

In an effort to identify the assailant, sheriff’s investigators are poring over photos taken by tollway cameras. Cameras mounted at toll plazas photograph license plates of cars that fail to stop and pay. Many toll-road users have transponders mounted on their windshields, devices that allow toll plazas to track passing cars. Investigators said they also hope witnesses will come forward.

“It’s a fairly busy road,” Amormino said. “Hopefully somebody else saw something.”

The twins’ mother, Sylvia Ammann, said the family will give $25,000 to anyone with information leading to the killer’s arrest.

Her voice crackling with anger, she jabbed at a recent picture of Justin -- grinning with his arm around his twin -- and swore that she would find out who killed her son.

“How could you hurt someone like this, someone so full of life?” she cried. “He had a heart of gold. He did not deserve a knife in his heart.”

Her surviving son, she said, will never be the same.

As the twins grew up in Huntington Beach, their lives followed the same path: star football players at Edison High School, managers of different EZ Lube oil-change facilities after graduation and, until Tuesday, working in the auto industry and living at home.

Justin was a manager at a Goodyear store in Tustin. His brother is a transmission specialist at Santa Margarita Ford, where his father, William, also works. The dealership is across the street from where the stabbing took place.

The twins’ mother, who said she has terminal cancer, said she’s been told she has no more than six months to live.

“I don’t care about that right now,” she said. “They might as well have killed me Tuesday.”

Justin’s fiancee, who turned 20 on Wednesday, described the man she started dating at 16 as “a family man, a hard worker.” The couple met when both were working at a Lake Forest EZ Lube.

“The guy works his tail off,” said Terra Hunsicker, waiting at the Ammanns’ home for information about the stabbing. “Everybody who came in touch with him saw how generous he was. If any of his friends needed money or a place to stay, they knew they could call him.”

The couple, engaged for two years, planned to marry this summer in a family-only ceremony on Catalina Island, Hunsicker said. She is hoping her fiance’s brother can provide answers on why Justin was killed.

“We’re just waiting for him to come to, because he’s the only person who can really have some credible information about this,” she said.

Sylvia Ammann said she is certain her sons didn’t provoke the killer’s actions.

“He loved everyone. He wouldn’t hurt a fly,” she said, her voice trailing off to a whisper. “There’s no excuse for this. None.”