Speed and alcohol are suspected factors in a one-vehicle crash early today in Kona that killed a 33-year-old man, according to Big Island police.

Police identified the victim as Joel Aguilar Ramirez, a Mexican national living in Kainaliu, Kona.

Ramirez was one of five men, all of them Mexican nationals, ejected from a south-bound 1996 Geo multi-purpose vehicle which went off the right side of the roadway on Route 180 between the 7- and 8-mile markers at 3:33 a.m.

Ramirez died at Kona Community Hospital at 5:52 a.m.

None of the five men were wearing seatbelts, said Traffic Enforcement Unit supervising investigator Sgt. Christopher Gali.

Investigators have been unable to determine who was driving the vehicle, Gali said. The four others in the vehicle — identified by police as Salvador Gonzalez Cruz, 27; Jaime Lopez Aguilar, 23; Gerardo Aguilar Garza, 19, and Ivan Ramos Villegas, 18, all of Kainaliu — were treated for minor injuries at Kona Community Hospital. They were later arrested for first-degree negligent homicide, questioned through an interpreter, and released pending further investigation, according to Gali.

Ramirez is the Big Island's 16th traffic fatality this year as compared to 23 by this time in 2007.