San Diego

A heavy equipment operator died Monday when he jumped from the cab of a runaway bulldozer and was run over by its left rear wheel.

Donald Lee Whitt, 50, of Lemon Avenue in La Mesa, was pronounced dead at the scene at an excavation site on the University of San Diego campus about 8 a.m. San Diego County Deputy Coroner Dan Matticks said Whitt suffered head and chest injuries.

Matticks said Whitt somehow lost control of his rubber-tired Caterpillar 834 as it started down an incline but couldn’t jump far enough from the wheels to avoid being run over.

“If he had just stayed with the thing, he would have been OK,” Matticks said. “It stopped on its own at the bottom of the incline.”

Guy Kaland, an equipment operator who witnessed the accident from about 20 feet away, said the bulldozer might have jolted Whitt as he was trying to jump clear of it.

“It looked to me like it hit a bump at the time,” Kaland said. “It looked like he was catapulted up . . . he could have lost his footing.”

Whitt worked for the San Diego-based Mark McDowell Co., excavating the site of USD’s planned student center on Marian Way. Whitt had been a heavy equipment operator for four years, Matticks said, and had just returned from a two-week vacation with his wife, Billie.