3 in TV Crew Badly Injured in Filming of Stunt : Flaming Car Careens Into Camera on Location Set of ‘The Fall Guy’ Show

A stunt man was badly burned and two studio workers were seriously injured Friday when a flaming car slammed into a camera crew during filming in Encino of a scene for the television series “The Fall Guy.”

Witnesses said a cameraman was tossed onto Woodley Avenue by the impact and another crew member was carried more than 100 feet on top of the burning car before it careened into a cornfield in the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin.

Two other crew members reportedly suffered minor burns when they pulled the stunt car driver from the flaming wreck.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. officials in charge of production of the popular ABC-TV series identified the driver as John Cade, 33. He was hospitalized at Sherman Oaks Hospital’s burn center with second-degree burns on his face, a studio spokesman said.

2 Have Broken Legs

Cameraman Don McCuaid, 42, and Robert King, 30, a stunt man, were rushed to Northridge Hospital Medical Center for treatment of broken legs, the spokesman said. The two other burned crew members were not identified.

Alcus Holly, a stunt safety representative for the Screen Actors Guild, was sent to the scene to discuss the crash with the film unit’s director. Holly said he did not order production shut down, and filming resumed several hours later.

The crash occurred as Cade steered a speeding sedan up a wooden ramp and over a 40-foot-long semitrailer parked at the entrance of the Donald Tillman Water Reclamation Plant, the studio said. The car was fixed to burst into flames as it sailed over the truck and onto Woodley Avenue’s northbound lanes.

That much went as planned. But the car hit the pavement harder than expected and swerved sideways, witnesses said. McCuaid and King, who were operating equipment set up on Woodley Avenue’s center divider, were hit as they attempted to run out of the path of the careening car, the witnesses said. Their camera was untouched.

‘Went Out of Control’

“It looked like the car’s suspension failed,” said off-duty Los Angeles Police Officer Jim Van Bibber, who watched the drama unfold as he stopped Woodley Avenue traffic for the scene. “They had it beefed up, but the whole car sagged in the middle. The car went out of control sideways and hit the camera crew.”

Another witness, Don Skriver, said King was carried 100 feet by the skidding stunt car and then was thrown into the air as the vehicle bounced over a curb and bike path and skidded into the cornfield.

“It was really a sad sight. Everybody on the crew seemed to be stunned by it. They completely stopped everything for a few moments before everybody ran over to help the people who were hurt,” said Skriver, a security guard at the sewage treatment plant.

3 Cameras Filmed Scene

Three studio cameras filmed the crash. A studio spokesman said it has not been decided whether the scene will have to be staged again for a fall episode of the adventure series.

“The Fall Guy” stars Lee Majors as a Hollywood stunt man and bounty hunter. He and co-stars Doug Farr and Heather Thomas were not present at the 11 a.m. incident, the studio said.