Auto Crash Ends a Life but a New One Begins

In just a few minutes Thursday night, Paul Wilcox Jr. became both a widower and a father.

Moments after his wife Vickie was killed in a traffic collision that also killed a teen-ager, paramedics rushed the body of the 8 1/2-months-pregnant woman to a hospital, where doctors performed a Caesarean section. They delivered a strong 6-pound, 12-ounce boy.

The dead woman’s father said Friday that he believes his as yet unnamed grandson is a gift from God.

“She’s leaving me a part of her,” Keith Glaister said as he sat in the Long Beach apartment he shared with his daughter and her husband. “She wouldn’t take everything away (with) her.”

The boy was listed in good condition Friday at St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, where all those injured in the traffic accident were treated. Glaister said the infant would likely be named Paul Marvin Wilcox III.

Vickie Wilcox had eagerly awaited the birth of the couple’s first child. The 18-year-old expectant mother had been bedridden for 13 days suffering severe pain related to her pregnancy. Finally, her doctor asked that she be brought to Pacific Hospital in Long Beach where labor could be induced, Glaister said.

As directed, Paul Wilcox, a 21-year-old Marine lance corporal on leave from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, drove his wife in their new Ford pickup truck. Traveling north on Pacific Avenue at about 9:30 p.m., he entered the intersection at 7th Street just as the light turned yellow, Long Beach police said.

In the intersection, the pickup slammed into a car carrying five Long Beach teen-agers on their way home from night classes at Wilson High School. Police said the driver, Alan Sims, 18, apparently entered the intersection before his light turned green.

The force of the impact threw Vickie Wilcox from the cab of the truck and her chest was crushed as the vehicle flipped over on her. She was not wearing a seat belt.

The collision sent Sims’ car careening first into a parked car and then onto the front porch of a nearby apartment house, police said. Mshajaa Watkins, 17, who had been sitting in the back seat, was pronounced dead at the scene.

Paramedics attempted to resuscitate Vickie Wilcox but it was futile, fire officials said. They thought, however, that there was a chance to save her unborn baby, so they broke from normal procedure. Instead of coordinating rescue efforts at the scene, they rushed her body to the hospital, Fire Department spokesman Bob Caldon said.

Paul Wilcox suffered head lacerations and was hospitalized in fair condition. On Friday he was in a room two floors above his newborn son’s.

Sims, the driver of the other car, was reported in serious condition with multiple fractures and possible head injuries. Marvin Cage, 18, a passenger, was also in serious condition with a fractured leg and possible internal bleeding, according to fire and hospital spokesmen.

Two other passengers, Darnell Williams, 17, and Duane Williams, 17, who are not related, were treated at the hospital and released.

Both cars appeared to be within the speed limit at the time of the collision, Long Beach Police Detective Hans Kohnlein said. But, he said, police will ask the district attorney’s office to press two counts of felony manslaughter against Sims for allegedly entering the intersection before the light turned green.