Trucker Pleads No Contest to Manslaughter in Crash Near San Onofre

A San Jose truck driver has pleaded no contest to vehicular manslaughter in September’s deaths of three Dutch tourists whose vans he rear-ended on Interstate 5 just south of the Border Patrol checkpoint at San Onofre.

The victims were part of a 23-member musical tour group from the Netherlands. They were heading back to their Orange County motel after a day at San Diego’s Sea World.

The crash injured 19 others and brought northbound traffic on Interstate 5 to a three-hour standstill.

Neil Adams, 33, Monday changed his plea from not guilty as jury selection in his trial in Superior Court was about to begin here.

Adams will be sentenced June 14 and will face a maximum prison term of five years, four months in state prison and a fine of $30,000, San Diego County Deputy Dist. Atty. Walt Donovan said.

In exchange for his plea of no contest for each of three counts of vehicular manslaughter, the district attorney’s office dropped charges that Adams possessed methamphetamine at the time of the crash.

Adams remains free on $32,000 bail.

Prosecutors had sought to charge Adams with the more serious charge of vehicular manslaughter through gross negligence, but that charge was dropped at Adams’ preliminary hearing when another truck driver testified that Adams showed no signs of careless driving for the 18 to 20 miles before Adams approached the San Onofre checkpoint.

Witnesses testified at Adams’ preliminary hearing in January that Adams was driving his tractor-trailer rig in the slow lane as he approached the checkpoint.

Had he remained in that lane, witnesses said, Adams would have had no traffic ahead of him and would have been diverted off the freeway for the California Highway Patrol weigh station.

But instead, witnesses said, Adams inexplicably crossed into the next lane to his left and failed to slow as traffic in front of him braked for the checkpoint.

Adams plowed into a Ford passenger van traveling at about 10 m.p.h. and carrying half of the Dutch group.

At impact, that van crashed into a second van carrying the other members of the group.

Two passengers in the first van--Wonny Ooft, 28, and Wiellem Gannsen, 35--were killed at the scene with broken necks. Jof Richares, 48, a passenger in the second van, died a day later after he suffered a heart attack.

An attorney representing some of the injured tourists and the survivors of the victims later filed a $30-million civil lawsuit against Adams and the truck company that had hired him.

While Adams’ plea of no contest carries the same weight as a guilty plea in criminal court, it is not an admission of liability in a civil proceeding.

Adams, who was unhurt, was given a field sobriety test at the scene by a CHP officer and arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. A test later showed his blood-alcohol content at 0.03--below the 0.10 standard for being legally drunk--but it also showed traces of methamphetamine in his blood.

Officers found 1.3 grams of methamphetamine in his cab.