Corby Hawks The victim of an early morning car crash who died of asphyxiation on Dec. 15 was identified as Corby Hawks, 32, said Craig Stevens, Ventura County senior deputy medical examiner.

The last time Mary Ford, his aunt, saw him was Thanksgiving. A Yucaipa resident, Ford said she and his family were looking forward to seeing him again at Christmas.

“Corby was so fun to be around,” Ford said.

He had a master’s degree in American studies from Columbia University in New York and a bachelor’s in religious studies from University of California Santa Barbara.

“He was a very good writer. He loved to write. He loved to read. He played the guitar and loved music,” his aunt said.

At the family’s Thanksgiving gathering, while playing charades, one of Hawks’ cousins acted out a famous person. Hawks guessed loudly, “Jesus Christ!” and was correct, Ford said.

Hawks had been living with his mother in Redlands up until about a week before the accident, when he moved to Thousand Oaks to stay with a friend, Ford said.

“We don’t know what happened that night. We don’t know where he was going or what he was doing,” she said.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation, said Senior Dep. Rick Godfrey.

The single car crash left Hawks trapped with his left leg pinned in the wreckage, Stevens said. He suffocated from smoke and carbon monoxide in his burning car at 3:50 a.m., after the silver 2005 Mercedes sedan he was driving east on Avenida de Los Arboles left the road and hit a large pepper tree near Kensington Avenue.

When sheriff’s and fire department personnel arrived, the vehicle was engulfed in flames, officials said. A person who called 911 after hearing the crash ran to the scene and found a man, who appeared to be unconscious, in the driver’s seat.

“He was alive enough to inhale smoke and carbon monoxide from the car fire. He died from asphyxiation,” Stevens said.

Ford said she was thankful someone had seen him unconscious after the crash. She said the family was upset at the thought of him trapped inside the car fighting to get out.

Hawks was declared dead at the scene. His body was unrecognizable. To verify Hawks’ identifty, Stevens waited for dental records to come by overnight mail from New York.

The impact with the tree pushed the car’s engine into the passenger compartment. The fire was so intense it melted the car’s metal, Godfrey said.

Toxicology test results will take 12 to 16 weeks, Stevens said.

Hawks’ MySpace page describes him as single, with Redlands as his hometown. He listed his mother as one of his heroes.

He also wrote, “Done it all. Will do it again.”