::: COMMUNITY NEWS

The driver of the big rig and the driver and passenger on the school bus suffered only minor injuries.

Three-vehicle accident closes Jackson Road for seven hours

Published Monday, October 9, 2006

A three-vehicle crash on Jackson Road Monday morning involving a school bus and a big rig seriously injured an Elk Grove man and caused minor injuries to an 8-year-old Murieta boy on the bus and the bus driver. The accident closed Jackson Road until early afternoon.

The truck driver escaped major injury, as did a laborer who was digging a ditch where the truck and the bus came to rest after the collision.

The 6:30 a.m. accident occurred on Jackson Road about a mile west of the North Gate when a Jeep Cherokee passing other westbound vehicles collided with an eastbound big rig, according to CHP Officer Felix Izarraras. “Once the big rig was hit, it lost control and went into the westbound lane where the bus was traveling. … It pushed the bus off the road,” he said.

Debris and damaged asphalt formed a trail between the location of the truck and school bus collision and the location of the crashed Jeep 400 to 500 feet farther west. Midway between the two sites, a floral cross affixed to a utility pole commemorated a previous accident there.

Izarraras said the boy and the driver were taken to area hospitals by ambulance as a precautionary measure. The 44-year-old driver of the Jeep was transported to UC Davis Medical Center by helicopter in critical condition after emergency personnel removed him from the wreckage.

The boy was the only passenger on the 22-passenger bus, which shuttles special-needs students, officials said. The child is a student at Barbara Comstock Morse Elementary School in South Sacramento, according to Elk Grove Unified School District officials, who would not identify the boy or the bus driver for reasons of confidentiality.

Izarraras said the big rig “spun around and overturned” after it collided with the Jeep. The truck ended up on the shoulder of the westbound lane with the engine sheared from the cab and its load of sand spilling from the jackknifed trailer.

Venancio Rodriguez was digging a ditch for electrical conduit next to a utility pole along the highway when he heard the impact and looked up to see the bus and the truck hurtling at him.

“If I don’t run, the (tire) rim’s going to get me,” he recalled thinking as he scrambled out of the ditch.

The big metal tire rim landed on top of the ditch. The school bus came to a stop inches away.

Rancho Murieta Security Patrol Officer Bo Hobart arrived at the scene of the accident soon after it occurred and helped the driver out of the truck. The woman bus driver and the student had already exited the bus, but the truck driver was belted into his seat, his legs dangling. The floor of the cab had disappeared in the crash and diesel fuel was pouring from the wrecked big rig.

“It was the most incredible thing I’ve seen in my life,” Hobart said of the driver’s escape from serious injury in the accident.

The road was closed for cleanup and to allow CHP officers to conduct their investigation of the accident scene. One lane reopened at 1 p.m.; the second lane reopened at 1:30.

Izarraras said the CHP is looking into reports that the Jeep ran traffic lights at the North and South gates just before the accident.