1 KILLED, 3 INJURED ON HIGHWAY 14.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro and Charles F. Bostwick Daily News Staff Writers

A motorist was killed and three other men seriously injured Thursday when a vehicle crossed the Antelope Valley Freeway's median south of Avenue P, officials said.

A 1994 Pontiac Trans-Am inexplicably veered across the 40-foot-wide dirt and asphalt freeway median, spinning and hitting a 1988 Ford Festiva coming from the other direction, California Highway Patrol officials said.

The Ford, whose driver was killed and two passengers seriously injured, was badly damaged in the 4:24 p.m. crash.

``Based on what evidence we have here, the driver of the (Ford) vehicle had very little if any warning,'' CHP Sgt. Tom Lackey said. ``Then all of a sudden his life was taken away.''

The death was the seventh since 1990 near Palmdale caused by a vehicle crossing the freeway median. Although it has rejected claims it was responsible for the deaths, Caltrans has installed miles of median barriers.

But the section where Thursday's crash occurred is not scheduled to get steel-beam barriers until 2000, records show.

Less than two miles to the south, a Palmdale couple and their two children were killed in January, also by a car that skidded across a section of the median without a barrier.

The Pontiac Trans-Am driver was identified as Gary Konrad, 48, of Palmdale. He was flown by helicopter to Northridge Hospital Medical Center, officials said.

The Ford's two passengers were identified as Lancaster brothers Felipe Cabrera, 43, and Jaime Cabrera, 30. The identity of the dead male driver was not immediately disclosed.

Felipe Cabrera went to Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills, and Jaime Cabrera to Northridge.

``The best way to describe it is a bad accident,'' Fire Inspector Ed Loney said.