Truck Kills Immigrant Who Helped Driver in Need

Onofre Barba, a Mexican immigrant, spent his 15th day in the United States and his last one alive helping someone in need.

Barba’s brother-in-law, Guillermo Rodriguez, had asked the 23-year-old man to keep him company Friday morning on a truck transporting construction materials from North Hollywood to Long Beach and then to Chatsworth. Barba had obliged.

When the two men got off the Simi Valley Freeway at De Soto Avenue about 10 a.m., they noticed a woman driving a car with a tire rapidly losing air.

“He said, ‘Look, let’s help her,’ ” Rodriguez said.

That offer cost Barba his life. He was crushed by the 75,000-pound rig, which rolled forward onto him as he reconnected an air hose that pumped pressure from the trailer rig’s air-locked brakes.

Barba had first pulled the air hose from the big rig and tried pumping air into the tire, but it was punctured and the air leaked out, Rodriguez said.

So the men offered to mount the spare tire that the car’s driver, Sandra Wegscheld of Reseda, carried in the trunk of her car.

The spare was in place, and Wegscheld was grateful and ready to be on her way, when Barba noticed that the new tire also was low on air. He ran back to the truck and pulled out the air hose again to quickly inflate the tire. As Barba connected the air hose for the second time, the trailer brakes lost pressure and failed.

He was killed instantly.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” Wegscheld said, crying softly about an hour after the accident. “He was being a good Samaritan. So few people even think to do that these days.

“I wonder what God’s justice is.”

Rodriguez, who had just finished changing the tire and was still underneath Wegscheld’s car, said he heard his brother-in-law give a short yell and then heard Wegscheld cry out.

It was too late.

Though he had driven trucks in Mexico, Barba did not know much about trucks of this kind, Rodriguez said.

Barba had moved here just over two weeks ago from the Mexican state of Jalisco. He needed to pay off some debts and had a wife and 1-year-old baby in Mexico to support. He had decided the quickest way to make ends meet would be to work in the United States. He had hoped to find a construction job.

“He looked forward to living here and finding work,” said Rodriguez, who had offered Barba a place to stay in his North Hollywood apartment with his wife and two children.

And, on Friday morning, Rodriguez said, he had looked forward to his brother-in-law’s companionship.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” said Rodriguez, who for two years has spent many solitary hours driving a big rig. “I asked him to come along because I thought it would be nice to have somebody to talk to.”

And then, Rodriguez, a devout Christian, said he would grapple with breaking the news of Barba’s death to his wife, Barba’s older sister.

Rodriguez said: “I watched him grow up.”