Injured Hit-Run Victim Lay by Freeway for 4 Days

For four long days and nights, with much of his body shattered by a hit-and-run driver, Juan Francisco Camacho lay near death in the brush-covered median of Interstate 5 in Oceanside as hundreds of thousands of preoccupied motorists passed by without noticing him.

At first, as the lines of cars whizzed incessantly past on both sides, the 20-year-old migrant worker shouted out for help in Spanish and rattled a small tree branch overhead in the slim hope that someone would see him.

But as the days passed, and as the shock from his shattered pelvis, broken arm, broken shoulder and internal injuries began to set in, Camacho lay listlessly, talking to himself, imagining that the telephone wires overhead were answering his calls.

Finally rescued after a passing motorist called the 911 emergency number, Camacho is recuperating from his numerous injuries and subsequent infections, a survivor of a painful roadside vigil that emergency room doctors have called a miracle case of staying alive.

“I was shocked. It’s really incredible that he’s still here,” said Dr. Edgar Gamboa, a trauma surgeon at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla. “Even if they get treatment within the first hour, many people still die from these types of injuries.

“And here he’s still alive, despite lying by the side of the road for so long, with all the bacteria and infections that had set in his body. Even after we got him in the hospital, we half expected him to die for the first two days.”

Even highway authorities are shaking their heads at Camacho’s gritty determination.

“This is the only instance I’ve ever seen in which a pedestrian has been hit on the road and didn’t get immediate help, was forced to lay there for days and then suddenly shows up on the roadside--alive,” said Michael Tomasik, an accident review officer for the California Highway Patrol.

The case of Camacho--who says he was simply headed home to a migrant camp--is distinct from those of many other illegal aliens who have been struck by vehicles farther north along I-5 while attempting to evade the U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at Camp Pendleton. Since 1988, according to the CHP, 22 illegal aliens have been struck and killed along I-5 directly north and south of the checkpoint.

Lying in his semiprivate hospital room, his repaired pelvis in traction, tubes running from various parts of his body, Camacho described the ordeal that began the night of May 5 as he tried to cross the busy freeway.

The illegal alien from Oaxaca, Mexico--who has lived in the United States since 1986--said he had come to Oceanside that Saturday from a migrant camp near Bonsall in the hope of finding work.

About 8 p.m., after a frustrating day of job-hunting, he decided to take a shortcut across the freeway to catch the bus back home. Just after darkness fell, Camacho scurried across the southbound lanes and was walking along the inside shoulder of the freeway when the car hit him.

Camacho said he never heard it coming. “The only thing I heard was music,” he said in Spanish. “American music.”

Doctors say the car apparently hit Camacho from behind, shattering his midsection. Then the driver drove off.

Camacho recalls crawling off the road to avoid being hit again. “I crawled so I could get beneath a tree,” he said. “I was rolling and dragging myself.”

The next 92 hours--until he was rescued by authorities on the following Wednesday afternoon--have become a blur in Camacho’s mind. He recalls seeing the houses that line the opposite side of the freeway and calling out to them. His only SOS signal was to continually rattle the branches of nearby bushes.

Camacho was dressed only in a thin, zippered jacket. The nights were cold and the days long and hot. Eventually, he lost the feeling in his legs. All the while, the pain in his shattered body came and went.

He had nothing to eat but soon noticed a water sprinkler nearby. Crawling on the opposite side of his broken arm and shoulder to reach the sprinkler, his body dirtied and wracked with infection and fever, Camacho sipped water to stay alive as cars whipped past nearby.

Tomasik said the freeway median in the area is shrouded by thick oleander bushes that often hide the shanties of homeless men and women. “If he got in there, it’s not surprising no one saw him,” the officer said.

By Wednesday, Camacho had become delirious. He recalled talking to himself--and hearing the telephone wires answer back. Finally, he said, he decided to crawl back out by the road shoulder to become more visible.

Shortly before 4 p.m., as yet another rush hour began along the often choked freeway, Camacho was rescued. Authorities say a northbound motorist apparently spotted the worker and called 911 from Camp Pendleton.

“When we got him, he was in shock from loss of blood. His blood pressure was down to about 60, which is about half the normal pressure,” Gamboa said. “He was dehydrated, he had a dislocated knee and his pelvis was cracked open like a book. There was bacteria and infection from all the dirt in his wounds.”

Doctors say the low blood pressure in such a young man shows that his wounds went without treatment for many days. But Camacho’s peak physical shape--along with the fact that none of his vital organs were crushed--probably saved his life, they say.

Along with a determined will to live.

“How long could he have survived?” Gamboa asked. “There’s no way of telling. I guess it was up to him.”