Sports Car Race Driver Killed, Another Injured.

Aircraft Employee, 23, and Grocer, 51, Victims of Separate Crashes at Agoura.

Disaster struck a grim keynote at yesterday's running of the final regional amateur sports car road race meet on the two-mile Paramount Ranch track at Agoura when George Sherrerd III, 23, of Pala Alto, was instantly killed and Hugh Woods, 51, of Borrego Valley, was critically injured in two separate crack-ups.

Sherrerd, an aircraft employee, was at the helm of a Jaguar XK 120M when his speeding car crashed into a guard rail on Turn 1 during the 10-lap preliminary for big production cars.

A huge splinter of metal from the guard rail pierced Sherrerd's car on the left side, passed through his body and emerged from the trunk of the mount.

Sherrerd was pronounced dead before being placed in an ambulance.

His fiancée, Miss Sharon Koch, also of Palo Alto, was present at the track but not at the fatal turn where Sherrerd's parents live in Pinehurst, N. C.

Woods, a grocery market proprietor in Borrego Valley, drove his speeding Corvette into the same guard rail earlier in the day in a pre-race practice spin.

Woods, a grandfather, was taken to the Northridge Hospital, where he underwent surgery.

Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA 8 Dec 1957
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Transcribed by Linda Horton. Thank you, Linda!