Ryo Uchimiya, 51, a longtime sushi chef at Nobu Malibu, was asleep in his parked car on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, Calif., when a Range Rover SUV struck his car and two others just before 7 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said. He was parked down the street from the restaurant, had arrived early for work as he often did, and was napping.
Authorities have identified the 16-year-old boy who was driving the SUV, but they have not publicly named him because of his age.
The crash happened near Carbon Canyon Road. Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. John Addington said the Range Rover hit Uchimiya’s car at about 6:50 a.m. and that it appeared the driver had been speeding.
The driver survived the collision, stayed put and worked with investigators once they arrived. Officials said he showed no signs of being under the influence, and nobody else was hurt.
The Range Rover was a 2026 Land Rover leased by Hollywood composer Harry Gregson-Williams, 64, according to DMV records. It is unclear what connection the 16-year-old driver has to him or why he was behind the wheel. Reached by phone, Gregson-Williams said: “This family is grieving just as the other family.”
No charges had been filed as of Monday, Oct. 5, and the sheriff’s department investigation remained ongoing as of that date. The medical examiner’s office ruled Uchimiya’s death an accident caused by multiple blunt force injuries. The Los Angeles medical examiner’s office identified him.
Video Shows SUV Drifting
Surveillance video from a surf shop across the street appeared to show the Range Rover drifting from the right lane toward the shoulder of PCH moments before it plowed into the parked sedan. The fog line — the painted stripe that divides the traffic lane from the shoulder — was crossed by the SUV before it struck the chef’s car. A former Malibu mayor, Jefferson Wagner, owns the surf shop sitting across the highway from the crash site and handed over the footage.
“He was asleep,” Wagner said. “He gets here early and takes a snooze and then goes to work on time.”
Additional video shows the SUV striking the parked car with force that sent it flying forward into another parked vehicle.
A witness, who was not named, told KTLA of the teenage driver: “He’s a young kid.” The same witness said: “His parents didn’t even show up to find him. He was sitting here two hours by himself.”
A Deadly Stretch of Highway
Nobu employed Uchimiya for 25 years, and colleagues credited him with helping build up the operation at the Malibu restaurant. Nobu Malibu is a high-end Japanese restaurant known for its celebrity clientele. The restaurant’s manager, who was not named, said the “family of staffers” there were doing whatever they could to support Uchimiya’s relatives. “Obviously, it’s been a very, very difficult day for so many people,” the manager said, according to KTLA.
A memorial has sprung up near the spot where Uchimiya died, and origami cranes now hang there. Wagner visited it.
Drivers on the 21-mile stretch of PCH that runs through Malibu travel one of the state’s deadliest and most notorious roads, a corridor that has averaged roughly four crash-related fatalities a year over the past decade. Wagner, who has leased his storefront along the route for years, said his own count of the dead there stands at 10.
Four Alpha Phi sorority sisters from Pepperdine University were hit and fatally injured in an October 2023 crash, when, authorities say, a BMW driven by a 22-year-old Malibu man at an estimated 104 mph in a 45-mph zone struck three parked cars that were pushed into them. Fraser Bohm, the driver in the case, faces multiple counts of murder and vehicular manslaughter.
New Speed Cameras Coming
Officials responded to that case with plans for tougher safety measures, among them cameras and steeper fines for speeding. Conditions along the corridor have grown more complicated since the January 2025 fires destroyed homes and businesses in the area, leaving construction zones and reduced speed limits scattered across the route.
A warning phase for new speed cameras along the highway is due to start in November after delays, Malibu says, and city officials hope the rollout will curb the kind of speeds investigators are now examining. Preliminary testing on its own produced about 100,000 speeding violations across four cameras in nine days, from Sept. 16 to 24, the city said.