Some Hero’s Welcome: Rescuers Sued : Courts: Officer and passerby came to the aid of three people in freeway crash. But one victim alleges that he was struck by another car because of negligence.

Jim Campbell received the kinds of honors Thursday that often go to public heroes who risk their lives to help others.

Campbell, a Lancaster carpenter, went to a luncheon, accepted several framed plaques and endured repeated handclasps with public officials--all because he stopped on his way to work last Jan. 30 and aided three people trapped in an overturned car.

What Jim Campbell did not expect for his brief heroism was a lawsuit.

Campbell and Los Angeles Police Motorcycle Officer Loran Dale Turner--awarded the department’s highest honor for his actions that morning--are being sued by one of the three crash victims, who was injured by a second car that veered into the overturned vehicle.

“I’m pretty calm about it now,” Campbell said just before he was honored with nine other men by the Mid-Valley Community Police Council. “But when I first heard about it, I was real upset.”

According to the Police Department and the citizens’ group that presented honors at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Van Nuys, Campbell, 31, and Turner, 42, are heroes for coming to the aid of Ricardo Garcia, his wife, Norma--who was in labor--and a cousin.

As gasoline gushed from the overturned car, the two men carried Garcia’s pregnant wife to safety and went to the aid of the cousin, who was struck by another vehicle.

But in a lawsuit, filed Sept. 25 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the cousin, Anzelma Sanchez-Sianez, 17, claimed that she was struck by the second car because of negligence. According to her lawyer, Paul Jay Bershin, Sanchez-Sianez alleges “that the police officer failed to put up a flare pattern to stop the vehicle” that hit the Garcias’ overturned car.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages and also names Ricardo Garcia and the driver of the second car as defendants, claims that after helping Sanchez-Sianez out of the car, Campbell put her “in an unsafe place.” She suffered a ruptured spleen, Bershin said.

Turner, awarded the Police Department’s Medal of Valor in September, declined to answer the specific allegations in the lawsuit against him. But he angrily defended Campbell, claiming that the civilian was simply reacting with grace under extreme pressure.

“Had Jim Campbell not taken the actions he did that morning, there wouldn’t be a 10-month-old girl and a mom and a dad alive today,” Turner said. “I wish there were more Jim Campbells out there.”

Turner said that he would not have noticed the overturned car if Campbell had not already stopped to help. “I saw his car parked next to the center divider, and then I saw him jump over,” Turner said. “If he hadn’t been there, I would have kept on driving.”

Other cars passed by, but he stopped, Campbell said, because “it was the right thing to do.”

According to a police account, the car was northbound on the San Diego Freeway near Roscoe Boulevard in Van Nuys, on its way to a hospital, when it turned over in the fast lane of the freeway. Campbell parked his pickup truck on a “breakaway” lane on the southbound side of the freeway and by the time Turner made it to the divider, Campbell could hear the pregnant woman yelling: “My baby! My baby!”

“Gas was pouring out of the car right by her head,” Campbell said.

The two men assisted the expectant mother and the teen-ager from the car, Turner said. Ricardo Garcia emerged from the vehicle on his own. Then the two men, unaware that the frightened woman was referring to her unborn child, began searching for an infant. Precious moments passed, both men said, before they realized that the woman was in labor.

“I could see headlights coming--high beams, low beams,” Turner said. “I could see the next vehicle coming and I told (Campbell) to grab the lady’s legs and we lifted her up onto the center median barrier.”

Turner and Campbell said that they turned back to help Sanchez-Sianez, but it was too late.

“A (second) car crashed into the overturned car, there was a fireball and the second car veered hard left and took the teen-aged girl 180 feet down the freeway,” Turner said.

According to Turner, there was no time to even think about setting up flares. Even if there had been time, he said, the gallons of gasoline spilling out over the car and its occupants would have made using flares a fatal act.

“This whole thing took maybe 80 seconds,” Turner said. “There was no time to lay a flare pattern and you wouldn’t want to do it with gasoline pouring out all over the place.”

Since the incident, Turner has turned to City Councilman Joel Wachs for help in devising state legislation that might protect good Samaritans from legal liability when they help others as Campbell did.

“It’s the least we can do to thank people like Jim Campbell,” he said.

Jim Campbell sought a more private gesture. After the accident, he went to the hospital several times, he said, to check on Sanchez-Sianez’s progress.

“Last time I was there was on Valentine’s Day,” Campbell said. “I just wanted to see how she was doing. But I never heard from her.”