Gulf Copter Pilot Wrecks Car, Sets Off Chain Crash : Accident: A Marine just back from the Gulf ran off a freeway, causing injuries and two more pileups.

A Marine helicopter pilot, who had arrived home Sunday after flying a dozen combat missions in the Persian Gulf, lost control of his car Monday and ran off a connector road, touching off a series of crashes and injuries.

Less than 16 hours after Jeffrey Scott Oakley returned from seven months in the Middle East, he lay bleeding in his smashed 1989 Mustang, and two men who had tried to help him were injured when a truck hit them.

Authorities said Oakley, 23, had been drinking. He lost control of his car and drove off a 33-foot-high connector road which links the Costa Mesa and San Diego freeways. His car ended up in the middle of the southbound Costa Mesa Freeway where it was struck by a Volkswagen GTI. As several drivers stopped to help Oakley, a truck driver who was alleged to have been drinking slammed into the wreckage and dragged the two good Samaritans nearly 40 feet, authorities said.

When California Highway Patrol officers arrived after the 12:18 a.m. accident, the two men--one an off-duty Orange County sheriff’s deputy--were still under the truck.

“This is a nightmare,” Oakley said from his hospital bed at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. “I can’t believe I was (in the Middle East) for seven months . . . then to come home and do something like this. . . . I’m smarter than that.”

Oakley, who flew a CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, said he went to the Goat Hill Tavern in Costa Mesa to celebrate with a few buddies.

“I hadn’t eaten all day, and I hadn’t slept in 26 hours. I drank a little bit, but it had a greater effect on me than I thought it would.”

He left there to visit his fiancee. On the way, he “fell asleep behind the wheel,” Oakley said.

“It looked like a war zone out there,” CHP Officer Alvin Yamaguchi said.

Wayne S. Black, driver of the Volkswagen, apparently couldn’t see Oakley’s Mustang and hit it. Several people stopped to help Black and Oakley, who was still in his car. But before they could get Oakley out, Mark Edwin Murphy, driving a 1988 Chevrolet pickup, plowed through the wreckage.

“The guy didn’t brake,” Yamaguchi said. “There were no skid marks.”

Rodney Steven Valdez, 26, of Cypress, a five-year veteran with the Sheriff’s Department, and Steven Wilson, 23, of San Jose were struck by the truck, authorities said. Valdez was reported in serious condition at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Wilson was unconscious but listed in stable condition at Western Medical Center. Black suffered a nosebleed and Murphy, 33, of Orange, was unhurt.

Linda Burrus, a CHP spokeswoman, said Murphy was arrested on suspicion of felony drunk driving and Oakley was arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor drunk driving.

“The reality of what happened is just beginning to hit him,” Oakley’s fiancee, 22-year-old Kristin Chance, said. “He’s been through so much over the past seven months and then this happens.”