A young man charged with second-degree murder in the deaths of his two passengers on Torrey Pines Road was ordered on April 25 to stand trial after a judge heard testimony from a surviving passenger.

Aaron McCray, now 19, told San Diego Superior Court Judge Aaron Katz he remembered someone in the car asking Christopher Ray Schmittel, now 20, if he felt OK to drive. McCray recalled Schmittel replied “yes” despite consuming a lot of alcohol with a tranquilizer and psychedelic mushrooms.

“They had to cut the door off because it was stuck and cut my seat belt and pull me out,” said McCray. “My ankle hurt really bad and my entire leg.”

“I ended up having surgery for a broken femur, hip, ankle, and internal bleeding in my stomach,” said McCray, who wept at one point.

A recess was called by the judge so McCray could continue to testify as other members of the audience who were relatives of the deceased also were weeping. Several wore shirts showing the names of the two deceased men, Joshua Manzanares, 19, and Johnny Punzalan, 19, both of Lake Elsinore.

The incident occurred on April 25, 2022, in the 13000 block of North Torrey Pines Road in the Torrey Preserve neighborhood. Schmittel is from Moreno Valley. The hearing was held on the 1-year anniversary of the car crash.

McCray testified Schmittel was driving a Subaru WRX at a high rate of speed when it crashed through a guardrail. The car went off a ledge and landed on Torrey Pines State Beach in La Jolla. The two passengers who died were ejected.

Schmittel’s attorney, Terry Allen, asked Katz to dismiss the murder charges and only order a trial for gross vehicular manslaughter. Katz kept the murder charges at the request of Deputy District Attorney Hailey Williams.

Besides two counts of murder, Schmittel was also ordered to stand trial for two counts of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, and three counts of DUI causing injury. Additionally, he was bound over on charges of driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol, driving with a .08 blood/alcohol level, driving the wrong way on a road, and being a person under 21 with alcohol in his system.

If convicted of the two second-degree murder charges, Schmittel could be sentenced to 30 years to life in prison. He remains in the South Bay Detention Facility without bail.

Schmittel will return to court on May 12 to get a trial date set.

He has pleaded not guilty and was 19 years old at the time, but turned 20 in jail. A jury could decide whether to convict him of murder, vehicular manslaughter, all charges, or acquittal.