A towering pine tree on Culver Drive in Irvine has become the site of a makeshift memorial for a car influencer and a young woman who were killed early Sunday morning in a fiery crash so violent that the luxury sports car they were riding in split in two pieces.
At the base of the charred pine are dozens of bouquets — roses, daisies and white lilies. A Hot Wheels Porsche and other toy versions of exotic sports cars are scattered among the fallen pine needles — an apparent homage to 27-year-old James Wehr’s passion for cars.
Family members identified Wehr, who runs a weekly meetup in San Clemente for car enthusiasts, as one of the victims in the crash. The passenger was 22-year-old Alexis Kramer, a Florida native, who was visiting Wehr for the weekend, her family told the California Post.
The Orange County coroner has not publicly identified the individuals killed.
In the hours before the violent crash, Wehr and Kramer reportedly spent time in Newport Beach having dinner, according to published reports.
Newport Beach police confirmed to The Times that Wehr was stopped by an officer on Saturday night, roughly five hours before the crash in Irvine.
Wehr was driving near Newport Boulevard and Finley Avenue at 7:21 p.m. on Saturday when an officer “observed a vehicle with a loud exhaust” and initiated a traffic stop, according to Newport Beach police spokesperson Heather Rangel.
“The stop resulted in a warning issued to the driver,” Rangel said.
Authorities have not determined what caused the 2019 McLaren to veer off the road, but investigators believe speed was likely a factor.
“The vehicle lost control, crashed and broke into pieces,” Kyle Oldoerp, a spokesperson for the Irvine Police Department, told The Times. “You need to have sufficient speed to be able to do that.”
Police said the person behind the wheel of the McLaren, which was heading north on Culver Drive, stopped at a red light on Deerfield Avenue just before the crash. When the light turned green, the driver accelerated quickly, leaving behind dark tire marks on the intersection pavement. The speed limit on that stretch of Culver Drive is 50 mph.
As the driver lost control, the sports car veered to the right, jumped a curb and slammed into the pine tree, splitting the car in two and causing it to burst into flames, police said.
Irvine’s wide streets for years have provided a prime location for speeding, street racing and takeovers — sometimes with devastating results. Residents have long complained about a proliferation of high-powered cars racing down the city’s major thoroughfares, peeling out and doing doughnuts, and drivers revving their engines into the early-morning hours.
“Irvine has these long, very straight streets,” Oldoerp said. “At night it’s like a wide open freeway.”
The Police Department has cracked down on speeding and street racing in recent years using drones and other technology to nab offenders, Oldoerp said.
In 2020, the department along with other police agencies formed the Orange County Street Racing/Takeover Enforcement Team to ramp up enforcement. In 2016, the city made 19 arrests and issued 195 citations for street racing and reckless driving. In 2021, officers made 25 arrests and issued 309 citations, according to city data.
At the same time, the number of annual traffic collisions declined from 590 in 2016 to 93 in 2021, data show.
“We enforce traffic laws throughout the city,” Oldoerp said, adding that the department is “very aggressive with street racing.”
The inferno that resulted from Sunday’s crash was so large that it burned shrubs planted on the other side of the sidewalk, several feet away from where the car hit the tree. On Tuesday, a silver cross on a long chain hung from the pine tree’s bark, which was peeling and blackened from the blaze. Passersby on foot and in cars paused to gaze at the memorial.
Wehr, who was born in Australia, made a name for himself in Orange County as the co-founder of South OC Cars and Coffee, which he ran with his dad, Simon. The meetup, billed as the biggest weekly car show in the world, frequently draws hundreds of vehicles to the Outlets at San Clemente including hypercars, supercars, hot rods, muscle cars and motorcycles.
“It’s too soon,” Wehr’s mother, Sarah Wehr, wrote in post on social media for her son. “We brought you into this world at 2:36 a.m. on Aug. 17, 1999, and watched you grow into the magnificent man you are. Your love for people, for your friends and your family, was second to none. I remember your first steps at our home in Perth, Australia.
“I remember everything. All of it. Your insanely great belly laugh and your cheeky smile. Thank you for all the years we were blessed to know and love you, James,” she wrote.
Wehr married his wife, Emma, in July 2025 at the Grand Gimeno venue in Old Towne Orange. The couple met in college and dated for three years before getting engaged on a cliff in Ibiza, Spain, according to the couple’s wedding website.
Emma Wehr posted a series of photos on Instagram over the weekend in honor of her husband. Her account has since become private.
“I never thought the day would come that I’d have to say such a final goodbye. Getting the opportunity to love you will always be the greatest blessing in my life,” she wrote. “Like I said in my vows, I’m so grateful to have gotten the chance to live my life at the same time that you lived yours. Whether it’s in this lifetime or the next, my heart will always find its way to you. Rest easy, my love.”
Orange County records show Wehr had been ticketed for more than a dozen vehicle code violations beginning in 2017. So far in 2026, he had been ticketed on four occasions for alleged violations including failing to display license plates, not having his registration card and proof of insurance, and for not having a working muffler, according to court records.
The most serious allegation was in 2023 when he was accused of driving at more than 100 mph. He pleaded not guilty, and the infraction was dismissed in 2024, court records show.
Wehr’s relationship with Kramer, the other victim of Sunday’s crash, is unclear.
Kramer’s sister, Kaitlin, wrote on social media that Wehr had told the 22-year-old that he was “almost fully divorced and extremely separated.” A family member told the California Post that Wehr had invited Kramer to California to meet after the pair had been talking on Instagram for about a month.
Like Wehr, Kramer appeared to have a passion for cars and motorcycles. In August, she posted a series of photos posing on a Kawasaki motorcycle captioned “just a lil biker action this past weekend.”
Kramer was also a model for the 2026 Hooters calendar, according to her Instagram bio.
Her sister, Kaitlin, wrote in a post on social media that Kramer was “so much more than just my best friend, she was all of my love, my heart, my attitude, and my humor wrapped into a smaller, more chaotic, less filtered package. She was my other half.”
The tribute featured photos of the sisters as kids at a pumpkin patch and celebrating Kramer’s birthday at a Japanese steakhouse.
“It was always just the two of us,” Kaitlin Kramer wrote. “When either of us were going through hard times we were always curled up in each other’s beds just trying to figure it out together. I don’t know how to figure this one out without her.”
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