The state has been ordered to pay $4.6 million to the families of two teenagers killed in a 2006 car crash in Kalaeloa after an O'ahu circuit court judge found that the state failed to maintain the road and install adequate safety measures.

O'ahu Circuit Judge Sabrina S. McKenna ruled last week that the state was 55 percent responsible for the crash but also found that 45 percent of the fault rested with the victims, who should have known the driver of the car had been drinking, according to Derek S. Nakamura, the attorney who is representing the victims' families.

The July 24, 2006, crash took the lives of Tanya House, 18, and Leslie C. Kim, 16.

They were killed when the car in which they were riding sailed off the dead end of Franklin Roosevelt Avenue in Kalaeloa, and over a canal, before slamming into an embankment. The four people in the car had all been drinking at a party prior to the crash.

Today there are two signs at the start of the road and the end of road is blocked by a fence and multiple rows of yellow, sand-filled plastic drums.

"Back then it was a dangerous condition and that was the point we took 2.5 years to make," said Nakamura. "The reception (by the families) was satisfactory, when you balance some modicum of closure to this horrific circumstance."

Although the judge awarded $4.6 million in the case, the victims' families receive 55 percent or about $2.53 million of that because that is the amount of responsibility the order assigned the state, according to Hawai'i law. If McKenna had ruled the victims were more than 50 percent responsible for the crash, they would have received nothing, said Nakamura.

Kim's family will receive an estimated $1.3 million and House's family an estimated $1.1 million, Nakamura said.

"The public perception that we're after the state because they have the deep pockets, I cringe at that. It's easy for people to make snap judgments when you hear teenage drinking but have they gone out and seen the conditions of this road?" said Nakamura. "We would rather have it end here but my fear is the state will file an appeal and prolong the torment (for the families)."

Deputy Attorney General Dennis K. Ferm, who represented the state in the case, did not return two messages yesterday seeking comment.

Two other teenagers in the vehicle with House and Leslie Kim in 2006, Daniel A. Rebujio, the driver, and Ronald Kim, Leslie's younger brother, were injured in the accident. House had graduated from Kapolei High School in 2005 and Leslie Kim would have been a junior in 2006.

Rebujio, now 21, of Kapolei was sentenced to a one-year deferred sentence Oct. 1 by Circuit Judge Reynaldo D. Graulty.

In addition to the deferred sentence, Graulty suspended Rebujio's driver's license for a year, ordered him to perform 100 hours of community service and fined him $500. The agreement was reached Sept. 8, in which Rebujio, who had a .03 blood alcohol content at the time of the crash but was also 19, entered a no-contest plea to misdemeanor third-degree negligent homicide.

McKenna's ruling was the second time in the past two years that a judge ruled that a lack of safety signs and protective barriers led to death on Franklin Roosevelt Avenue.

In 2006, O'ahu Circuit Judge Karl K. Sakamoto acquitted a man charged with vehicular homicide and ruled that the road's condition was the "underlying root cause" of a 2003 crash that killed a passenger in the car. In that wreck, John G. Elder, a Navy man at the time, was charged with first-degree negligent homicide after his 1997 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 went off the road, became airborne and slammed into an embankment.

Elder, who has since been honorably discharged, was accused of being drunk when he drove through a chain-link fence at the end of the road. But Sakamoto ruled that the prosecution failed to prove Elder was drunk and also acquitted him of lesser negligent homicide charges.

He found that Elder drove about 45 mph. Sakamoto said the road did not have streetlights when the car crashed through the chain link fence, which had four small diamond-shaped reflector panels.

But the four reflectors were "virtually indistinguishable" from nearby lights on Kalaeloa Boulevard, the judge ruled, and there were no signs, warnings or other postings along the road to indicate that it would end.