1 Dies, 2 Hurt as Car Hits School Bus Leaving the Zoo

One young woman was killed and two people were seriously injured Wednesday when their their car went out of control on a rain-slicked freeway transition road and veered into the path of a convoy of Tijuana-bound school buses carrying children home from the San Diego Zoo.

Just after 4:30 p.m., officials and witnesses said, a compact car rounded the curve of the two-way transition road near Park Boulevard at high speed, crossing the double yellow line before fishtailing into the first school bus. Bus driver Andres Palmas, a 12-year employee of Sistema Escolar bus company, estimated that the car was going 50 m.p.h. and did not brake.

“It came around the curve, and I braked, but it was going too fast. The car started spinning around and slammed into the bus,” Palmas, 46, said, as his passengers, including 48 students from Escuela Primaria de Baja California, sat whimpering nearby on the side of the road.

School director Maria Elena Ortiz said six children were taken to the hospital for minor knee and neck injuries, but none were seriously hurt. Still, the wreck clearly traumatized many of the 8- to 11-year-olds aboard that bus and four others right behind it.

“They were crying, hysterical,” Ortiz said.

Carol Guadalupe Zermeno, an 11-year-old sixth-grader, said she saw the car approaching and then, “I saw glass from the car window spray up into the air. For a second it was quiet, then we all started shouting. . . . We were all scared.”

San Diego Fire officials said the 19-year-old male driver of the car was taken to UC San Diego Medical Center with major head injuries. The front-seat passenger, 20-year-old Nicolasa Alarcon of San Diego, was killed instantly. Rescue workers had to pry a second 20-year-old woman passenger from the back seat of the wrecked vehicle, and she was taken to Mercy Hospital with head injuries, facial cuts and possibly a broken leg.

The accident backed up rush-hour traffic near downtown San Diego as the California Department of Transportation closed off the transition road, which serves as the southbound exit from California 163 onto Park Boulevard and also connects Park traffic to southbound I-5.

Colleen Weaver, a secretary at the Naval Hospital in Balboa Park, was driving directly behind the first school bus on her way home from work. In the split seconds after the accident, she said, football players who had been practicing on the grassy field next to the highway sprang into action, opening the back door of the bus and helping the children to safety.

Weaver said the real heroine of the day arrived a few moments later--Deann Hawkins, a 22-year-old mother of three from Chula Vista who saw the accident from Park Boulevard as she was on her way to the chiropractor.

Hawkins, an unemployed emergency medical technician, said that, when she saw the wreckage, she hesitated, but only for a moment. Certified in January and unable to find a job, she said, this was her first “real” emergency.

“I said, ‘Oh, God. Should I go or shouldn’t I go?’ ” she said. “I wasn’t sure I would know what to do when I got there.”

Hawkins quickly attended to the back-seat car passenger, directing one of the football players to help hold her head in a “neutral” position in case she had spinal injuries. She then went to check on the driver, she said. He was bleeding and dazed and seemed to be having trouble breathing. She unfastened his seat belt and helped him out of the car, laying him down on the road.

She checked the front-seat passenger, who was also wearing a safety belt, but she had no pulse.

“I just did what I could,” she said. “I was just doing what I thought I should do.”

Times staff writer John Lee and the Associated Press contributed to this report.