Chase of Beer Thieves Is Fatal to Driver

A truck driver died Sunday of injuries he suffered while trying to prevent the theft of two cases of beer from his delivery truck, Chula Vista police said.

Alan Gaynor, 40, of Pacific Beach died at about 10 a.m. at UC San Diego Medical Center of massive head injuries he received Friday afternoon. Gaynor was pushed from the back of a moving pickup truck whose occupants had stolen the beer from his truck as he made a delivery at a 7-Eleven store in Chula Vista, police said.

According to police, while Gaynor was making the delivery at 603 Palomar St., a pickup truck carrying four males pulled alongside his truck. Two men then jumped out of the pickup, grabbed two cases of beer from Gaynor’s truck, and tossed them into the bed of the pickup.

Gaynor chased the men and grabbed the back of the pickup as it pulled away, police said. However, one or both of the two men in the back of the pickup pushed Gaynor off the truck as it drove off, causing him to fall and strike his head on the pavement, a police spokeswoman said.

Police said late Sunday that they had no suspects in the case and appealed to possible witnesses for help. Police described the suspects’ truck as an early-1980s pickup.

Coast Distributing Co., the company for which Gaynor had worked for 13 years, on Sunday offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for his death.

Meanwhile, some of Gaynor’s stunned friends and fellow drivers gathered in Clairemont on Sunday to share their grief over what one of them described as “a senseless crime . . . over some beer.”

“There are a lot of people in shock right now,” said Jim Glasser, a co-worker. “This was a murder. It’s hard to believe. The end result was that they murdered our friend over a $10 case of beer.”