Autopsy Finds Driver of Rabbit Truck Died From Crash

An autopsy on a 48-year-old Baldwin Park man who was killed Monday after his truck veered off Interstate 5 and slammed into a parked tractor-trailer in Carlsbad showed that the man died of multiple injuries from the accident, a coroner’s deputy said Tuesday.

Investigators at the scene just north of the Tamarack Avenue exit, where hundreds of rabbits from the flatbed truck were set free onto the freeway, had speculated Monday that the driver might have suffered a heart attack. The truck veered off the slow lane and onto the right shoulder for no apparent reason and crashed into the parked 18-wheeler without slowing down.

The driver of the tractor-trailer, which had pulled over to switch fuel tanks, was not injured.

Extensive Injuries

Deputy coroner Bill Leard said an autopsy on Fidencio Gonzalez Valdivia completed Tuesday showed the cause of death to be multiple head and chest injuries. The injuries were so extensive, however, it could not be determined if he suffered a heart attack moments before the accident, Leard said.

“Apparently he had no previous history of any heart disease and he was apparently in pretty good health,” Leard said.

Jordan Ingels, a California Highway Patrol accident investigator, said investigators have no idea why Valdivia veered off the road. “We will probably never know,” he said.

“According to witnesses, he was not forced off the road,” he said. Witnesses said the truck was traveling about 40 m.p.h. before the accident and was not moving erratically.

The coroner’s office said results from toxicology tests are expected in about six weeks. Investigators who contacted El Monte Rabbit Co. in San Gabriel Valley, Valdivia’s employer, were told that he was not an alcohol drinker, Ingels said.

Ingels said the National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the accident as part of a special project on the cause of fatal freeway accidents involving tractor-trailers. Ronald Heusser, an NTSB investigator, could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.