REGION — Authorities have publicly identified five people who lost their lives in San Diego-area traffic collisions over the last several weeks.
The most recent roadway death occurred shortly before 6 a.m. Monday, when Marcella Tortes, 31, crashed the vehicle she was driving into an embankment alongside Pala Temecula Road near Aruba Road in Pala, according to the county Medical Examiner’s Office. Tortes died at the scene of the crash.
Two days earlier, a car crash in Sorrento Valley fatally injured a 28-year-old man, the county agency reported. Patrick Kitts of San Diego was behind the wheel of a sedan that veered off the street in the 6500 block of Mira Mesa Boulevard and struck a tree in a landscaped center median at about 5:40 a.m. Saturday. Kitts died before paramedics could take him to a hospital…