COSTA MESA : Woman Killed as Her Pickup Hits Big Rig

An Irvine woman was killed early Tuesday when her pickup truck slammed into the back of a tractor-trailer rig hauling construction pylons on the Costa Mesa Freeway.

Gail Coram, 48, was driving from her newspaper delivery job for the Orange County Register to her job at Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa, where she worked as a nursing assistant with handicapped children for the last 12 years.

No traffic citations were issued, and the driver of the truck, Patrick N. Ford, 26, of Riverside, was unharmed.

California Highway Patrol officer Angel Johnson said Ford had pulled onto the shoulder of the freeway just north of the exit to the Corona del Mar Freeway to check a map. Coram’s pickup hit the larger truck from the rear as Ford tried to merge back onto the freeway about 5:30 a.m.

Johnson said the woman was driving about 70 m.p.h. when she hit Ford’s truck, which was traveling about 35 m.p.h. in the right-hand lane, causing most of the front of the pickup to get wedged under the big rig.

Ford then pulled off the freeway, dragging Coram’s truck with him, Johnson said.

“It was such a great impact that the steering column and steering wheel just crushed her.”

Coram is survived by her mother, Mary Summerville, a son, Sean, 21, and three younger brothers.

“She was always good to everybody, always cheerful,” Summerville said Tuesday from her Irvine home. “She’s very alert. She’s not the kind to fall asleep at the wheel.”