A MOTHER'S WAKING NIGHTMARE HEARTBROKEN GITTE LELLAN COPES WITH THE AFTERMATH OF FATAL COLLISION.

Byline: Orith Goldberg Staff Writer

CANYON COUNTRY - Her heart sank as she watched the evening news - four anonymous people dead in a crash in Canyon Country.

And then the tragedy became Gitte Lellan's nightmare.

The dead were three of her son's friends from Canyon High School and a stranger. The driver blamed for the four deaths, her son Marcus Christian Lellan.

The Feb. 17 collision on Soledad Canyon Road has ravaged the hearts of five families. While Gitte Lellan is thankful her son was spared, the pain consumes her.

``To know that a member of our family has caused that much pain is unbelievable,'' the heartbroken mother said. ``As parents, to know our son caused the others to die . . . I'm so sorry.''

Marcus is awaiting sentencing, having pleaded guilty to four counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence and a fifth misdemeanor count of reckless driving with bodily injury. He is due in court Tuesday when the date of his sentencing will be set.

His plea came early in the tedious court process. The teen and his family didn't want to salt the wounds of grieving families.

``Our main concern is not adding to the pain of the other families,'' his mother said.

Initially, Lellan admits, she wanted more than anything to free Marcus from jail. But then she thought hard about what had happened.

``That night, I paced around our home, looked at Marcus' empty bed and thought to myself, There are four other empty beds that no one will come home to. We can't bail him out,'' she said.

And when the time came, it was Marcus who insisted on pleading guilty, aware than it meant time in prison and possible deportation to his native Denmark.

Gitte Lellan said the family won't fight if her son is ordered out of the country to live in Denmark, where the crash had made front-page headlines.

``There is no reason to fight it in immigration court or he might as well have fought his criminal charges,'' she said.

Mother and son spent the afternoon together that day, and Marcus had dinner with his father Jorgen. The parents are separated.

Lellan was watching TV about 8:30 p.m. when news of the crash caught her attention. She paged her son when she heard a white car was involved in the crash.

About 9 p.m., Lellan heard a KCAL-TV (Channel 9) news broadcaster report that four people had died, three of them in a white Acura.

``That's when I realized it was Marcus' car and I was just like, Oh my God!,'' Gitte Lellan remembered.

Someone called the Lellan home and said everyone was dead at the crash site, including Marcus. Gitte Lellan's 16-year-old daughter, Denise, frantically called her friends to see if she could find out any more about the crash.

What they learned over time was that Marcus, speeding up a bicycle lane on Soledad Canyon Road, lost control and hit an oncoming vehicle.

Three of his four passengers - Dominic Ianozzi, 17, and brothers Timothy Renolds, 18, and Daniel, 15 - were killed.

The driver Lellan had hit head-on, Rodney ``Rocky'' Adams, also died at the crash site. He was a postal carrier in the San Fernando Valley for about 20 years.

``We were just shaking,'' Gitte Lellan recalled.

Denise Lellan drove her frantic mother to Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital where a teen assured that her son was OK.

``I could not comprehend all of the things that had happened,'' Gitte Lellan said. ``There were about 150 people at the hospital, it was unbelievable.''

Once reunited with her son, Gitte Lellan looked into his deadened eyes, told him she loved him and assured him that whatever the family had to deal with would be better than the horrible alternative of coping with his death.

``He wished he was dead and he would give his life to get those victims back,'' she said.

When he learned there was a fourth victim, he wanted to know all about Adams, if he was married or had any children, Gitte Lellan said.

Although investigators said Lellan had smoked marijuana in the 24 hours before the collision, Lellan said her son had not been under the influence of the drug in that time frame, but did acknowledge that he had smoked pot more than once in the previous month.

She stressed that her son was not intoxicated that night, and denied reports that the registration was expired on the car he had worked hard to buy.

When Marcus was 15 1/2, his father bought him a blue 1967 Camaro. Three years later, he sold the car and combined the proceeds with money from his job at Domino's Pizza to buy the Acura, his mother said.

Then on Oct. 30, he was ticketed for speeding not far from where his friends later died in his car. Lellan said she warned her son to be more careful and reminded him the speeding laws were there for a reason.

When he was ticketed Jan. 8, she felt she could not take his car away because he had paid for it and was an adult.

``I was upset and I said I don't want to lose you, but I didn't take his car away,'' she said.

But she put her foot down when Marcus wanted to exchange the engine for a more powerful one.

``I told him, under no circumstances, if he made those changes, would he be living in our home,'' Gitte Lellan said.

Marcus Lellan is currently being held in protective custody at the Pitchess Detention Center in Castaic. His family speaks with him every day.

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Photo: (color) A Feb. 17 collision on Soledad Canyon Road claimed the lives of three teen-agers and a 45-year-old man. Although Denise Lellan, the driver's sister, and Gitte Lellan, his mother, are glad he survived, they are heartbroken at the pain the crash has caused.

Ann Chi Erikes/Special to the Daily News