OXNARD : Man Hurt as Truck Cab Comes Loose

A freak truck accident triggered by a dog in traffic left a 19-year-old Oxnard man hospitalized in serious condition Monday, authorities said.

Ismael Espinoza had to be cut out of the truck’s tilt-cab, which flipped forward on Etting Road in Oxnard when the driver tried to stop for the dog and crashed roof-first into a 50-foot-high telephone pole, a California Highway Patrol spokesman said.

Espinoza was a passenger in the empty flatbed truck that he and his cousin, Miguel Espinoza of Oxnard, had recently painted and were returning to its owner, Officer Jim O’Connor said.

Miguel Espinoza, 22, was driving east on Etting Road about 12:40 p.m. when the dog darted into his path near Hailes Road. He was traveling at about 30 m.p.h., which normally would have been slow enough to brake without difficulty, O’Connor said.

But the latches on the truck’s tilt-cab were not secure, and the momentum of braking flipped the cab forward, so the windshield ended up parallel to the road surface at bumper-high level, O’Connor said.

With the driver unable to steer or apply the brakes, and its occupants staring down at asphalt, the truck veered off the roadway and the right side of the roof sliced through a telephone pole and collapsed onto Ismael Espinoza, police said.

Rescue workers took more than an hour to free the semiconscious passenger, whose right leg was broken and deeply cut by the wreckage, O’Connor said.

Ismael Espinoza was in an intensive care unit at St. John’s Regional Medical Center after surgery to reattach severed leg arteries, a hospital spokeswoman said.

Miguel Espinoza was treated for minor injuries at the same hospital and released.