FATAL CRASH 2ND IN MONTH.

Byline: Patricia Farrell Aidem Daily News Staff Writer

Two men were killed Tuesday when their armored car carrying $200,000 careened off the Antelope Valley Freeway, just a mile from the site of a similar crash that killed five motorists last month.

In fact, the earlier accident prompted the state Transportation Department to hasten plans for a guard rail along the remote stretch of freeway in the Acton and Agua Dulce area.

The cause of Tuesday's 6:40 p.m. crash has not been determined, said Officer Doug Sweeney, a California Highway Patrol spokesman.

Killed when their vehicle slammed into a hillside off the southbound freeway were driver Todd Andrew West, 29, a Las Vegas resident who was living with a sister in Norco, and security guard Kenneth Leroy Diekmann Sr., a 56-year-old retired Inglewood police officer who lived in Riverside, coroner's Lt. Cheryl MacWillie said Wednesday.

No other vehicles were involved, officials said.

Because of the large amount of cash in the vehicle, the CHP contacted Los Angeles County sheriff's homicide investigators to determine if foul play had been involved. Sweeney said the driver may have suffered a heart attack or been traveling too fast for the curve in the highway north of Escondido Canyon Road, Sweeney said.

There were no witnesses to the crash, but one motorist told investigators that the armored car had passed him at about 70 to 75 mph.

The vehicle crossed a ravine and slammed into a hillside. Firefighters used the hydraulic ``jaws of life'' in a futile effort to help the men.

The money, from automated teller machines, remained intact in the armored van. The van was owned by Vantech West Armor of Garden Grove.

The crash was a mile north of the site where five young Antelope Valley residents were killed April 8 when their speeding car went off the road.

A month later, Caltrans announced plans for 1,260 feet of guard rail in two spots along that stretch of freeway.

Sweeney said there is no way to say if the guard rail would have saved the two men killed Tuesday.

``Obviously, it would have prevented them from going over the embankment, but it would have knocked them into the roadway and anything could have happened,'' he said.