Dealing With Violent Rain on Freeways : Rash of Rock Tossings Has Authorities Baffled

Since the first of the year, San Diego has experienced a surge in a deadly type of freeway violence that has motorists glancing warily at freeway overpasses and law enforcement officials scrambling to find ways to combat it.

Between Jan. 1 and March 16, police say, an unusually high number of rocks or other objects have been thrown from freeway overpasses at motorists below. In that period, police have taken 10 reports of such incidents, involving one critical injury and damage to several vehicles. In 1987, the California Highway Patrol reported only 14 incidents statewide that resulted in injury or damage.

Officials trying to respond to the rash of cases have run into a peculiar problem: CHP and San Diego police figures on local incidents for previous years are almost non-existent.

Since Feb. 29, when Kurt R. Meyering was critically injured by a four-pound chunk of concrete that crashed through the sunroof of the car he was driving on Interstate 5 near the Pershing Drive overpass, four similar incidents have been reported in San Diego and Oceanside. Two teen-agers arrested in Meyering’s case have been charged with attempted murder.

Another Thrown But Missed

Another motorist told police a rock had been thrown at his vehicle--but missed it--moments before Meyering’s car was struck at about 8:30 p.m. But that incident was not included in the figures recently released by police.

Meyering, 30, remains in a drug-induced coma and on life-support equipment at Mercy Hospital.

The recent spate of freeway-overpass incidents has left the California Department of Transportation and state and local police worried about whether they are facing a new outbreak of violence. Officials have called for a meeting next week to discuss the problem.

CHP and Caltrans representatives will meet with San Diego police Monday to discuss ways to curb the illegal activity. Local CHP Officer Gary Alfonso said the meeting was called to see whether “the problems are more prevalent” in the San Diego area and to gather additional information. Local Caltrans spokesman Jim Larson said the meeting should lead to some course of action.

“The meeting was called to get accurate data so we can make some judgments,” Larson said. “If we do find a problem somewhere, we will react to it. The important thing now is to get the correct information.”

According to Caltrans statistics, since the opening of the first California freeway in 1940, only four deaths have been caused by rocks or other objects being thrown from overpasses.

Three People Killed in 1970

Two motorists and one passenger were killed by rocks within a 55-day period in 1970 in Los Angeles and Ontario. The last recorded death occurred in Los Angeles in 1973, when a child was killed by a rock that crashed into the car in which he was riding on the Santa Ana Freeway.

Although statewide statistics are not readily available, Steve Kohler, a CHP spokesman in Sacramento, said a quick computer search showed that 14 reports were filed last year involving objects thrown onto state freeways from overpasses. Seven people were reported injured and seven vehicles were damaged, he said.

In 1986 there were 21 such reports, involving five injuries and 16 damaged vehicles, Kohler said. CHP figures for years before 1986 would require a more extensive computer search, he said.

Caltrans and CHP authorities said preventing this type of crime is difficult if not impossible, and they noted that dozens more cases probably go unreported when the rocks and other objects miss their targets.

No Set Pattern to Incidents

In addition, the incidents follow no set pattern and appear to involve people from all socioeconomic backgrounds, Kohler said. “You can’t say that it only happens in certain areas, because they occur everywhere,” he said.

But if there is any consistency to the crimes, it is that they almost always occur in urban areas, Kohler said. And authorities almost never apprehend the perpetrators. San Diego police have made only one arrest in the 10 incidents reported this year, and say they have no suspects in the others.

“The police were fortunate in making arrests in that (Meyering) case,” said the CHP’s Kohler. “But for the officers, this is one of the most frustrating crimes to solve because the people who do this thing are usually juveniles who are very mobile and disappear quickly. Most of the time we just don’t get there in time to make any arrests.”

Figures Especially Ominous

The 10 incidents logged by San Diego police since Jan. 1 are especially ominous when compared to figures compiled by the CHP in Los Angeles in the past two years. CHP Officer Mike Moss said that in 1987, that agency recorded 30 incidents (an average of 2.5 incidents per month) of objects thrown at cars traveling on Los Angeles County freeways.

The figures represent a sharp increase from 1986, when only 18 (an average of 1.5 per month) incidents were reported in the county. However, Moss said computer records in the Los Angeles office do not show how many of the objects were thrown from overpasses or from the roadside.

State officials acknowledge that the shortage of data about such incidents is hampering their efforts to stem the problem.

Gene Berthelsen, Caltrans spokesman in Sacramento, said the transportation agency has not kept any statistics on objects thrown from overpasses at motorists 1978. Such figures were kept between 1971 and 1978, when annual reports of the incidents were required by the Legislature.

The annual reports ended when the Caltrans Departmental Transportation Advisory Committee voted unanimously on Dec. 1, 1978, to end them. After the committee’s action, statistics of rock-throwing incidents on the freeways were supposed to have been included in Caltrans’ annual operation reports. But officials quickly lost interest in the figures after such incidents began to decline, Berthelsen said.

Bill Hoversten, head of the Caltrans Office of Traffic Safety Program, said the agency relied on the CHP for figures. But after 1978, Caltrans stopped receiving CHP statistics on the incidents.

“In the 1970s, when it was an item of interest, we were trying to catch up on locations where incidents had been reported,” said Hoversten. “We did have a special reporting system from the CHP, but sometime after 1978 we stopped getting those reports, and don’t get them anymore.”

The annual reports were mandated by the Legislature after the three deaths in 1970. State officials said there are no plans to revive the annual reports.

Meanwhile, injuries to motorists and damage to vehicles appear to be increasing at an alarming rate in San Diego. Police and state officials say the Feb. 29 incident led to the following rash of “copycat” activities.

On March 9, a softball-size rock was thrown from the Landis Street overpass on Interstate 805, damaging a van.

On March 11, according to Oceanside police, a shopping cart was pushed from the Brook Street overpass to I-5, damaging a car.

On March 11, according to San Diego police, a teen-age girl who was driving a compact car was injured when a tire was thrown from the Tulip Street overpass to I-805 at about 10:45 p.m. The tire shattered the windshield and damaged the roof and hood of the car. The teen suffered minor cuts from flying glass, and another teen-age passenger escaped injury.

On March 16, a woman driving to work reported to San Diego police that a piece of pipe was thrown from the trolley bridge near Imperial Avenue onto I-5, shattering the car’s windshield. Neither the woman nor her passenger were injured.

“Frankly, it hasn’t been that much of a problem until recently,” said local Caltrans spokesman Shirley Webber.

Chain-link fences are routinely installed at least six feet above railings on pedestrian overpasses and bridges with sidewalks to prevent objects from being thrown onto the freeway, Webber said. To prevent objects being shoved through the fence, these fences have one-inch-square holes rather than the two-inch holes common in fences alongside freeways, she said.

Hoversten estimated that the state has about 2,000 freeway overcrossing structures from which objects could be thrown. Caltrans spends about $200,000 annually for fencing on the crossings--about four to six bridges a year.

The decision on which structures to fence is made by district Caltrans offices.

“We leave it up to the district offices to say, ‘We have a problem at this location,’ ” Hoversten said. “A known problem location has to have two or three repeats before a decision is made to fence. A single incident is regarded as an isolated incident.”

Most pedestrian overcrossings have chain-link fences that cover them entirely, including at the top, he said. Although most bridges also used by pedestrians have protective fences along the sidewalk, Hoversten said the overriding question “is still how high is high.”

As an example, he referred to an unusually high fence along a Los Angeles freeway where buses are frequently pelted by rocks and other objects thrown by unseen perpetrators.

“That fence is 14 feet high and sits behind a block-wall fence, but rocks and other things are still thrown over it,” Hoversten said.

The Pershing Drive overpass, from which the rock that hit Meyering was thrown, does not have sidewalks, and, according to Caltrans standards, does not require fences above the railings. The two juveniles involved in the incident should not have been on the bridge, said Caltrans officials.

The Tulip Street overpass has sidewalks and protective fences rising from the railings, said San Diego police Detective Jim Tomsovic. However, whoever threw the tire that injured the teen apparently tossed it through a narrow opening at the entrance to the bridge, he said.

The same is true for the Brook Street overpass on I-5 in Oceanside. Caltrans officials said both sides of the bridge include an eight-foot-high fence that extends from each railing.

Indeed, fences do not always guarantee protection from rock throwers. According to the last statistics released by Caltrans, in 1978, a total of 1,141 incidents involving objects thrown from overpasses onto state freeways were reported between October, 1970, and September, 1978. (Officials could not find statistics for 1971 and for the period between November, 1973, and November, 1974.) About 222 of these incidents occurred at overpasses that included protective fences.

During that same 1970-78 period, 64 injuries were reported from rock-throwing incidents, in addition to the three deaths. Officials said there are no figures available on the number of vehicles damaged or arrests made.

However, CHP officials are not convinced that all of the reported incidents actually involve objects thrown at motorists, said Alfonso of the local office.

Imagination Could Play Role

“Because of the recent reports of freeway violence, people are more apt to think that they were the targets of something,” he said. “We’re getting more reports of rock throwing, but many times it’s simply a case of a rock or board being kicked up by a passing vehicle and striking another car. It happens so suddenly that most motorists tend to think that someone is throwing things at them.”

In fact, CHP and Caltrans authorities said the shopping cart reported to have been thrown from the overpass in Oceanside may have fallen off the back of a truck. And Larson said the tire that shattered the windshield and crushed the roof of the car driven by the teen-ager may also have fallen off the back of a truck.