Worker Struck, Killed by Car on Freeway : Accident: Two other workmen dive to safety. Driver who sped past warning lights is seriously injured in second such incident in 24 hours.

As his colleagues dived over a center divider to escape, a worker on the Orange Freeway was struck and killed by a suspected drunk driver late Tuesday in the second fatal accident involving freeway workers in 24 hours.

Hugo Milton Sandoval, 36, of Los Angeles was killed when a car barreled past blinking warning signs and orange cones and hurled him over an electrical light generator. It was Sandoval’s first night on a new job.

The driver, Jeffrey Charles Monnette, 33, of Pomona, was in serious condition Wednesday night.

“It happened so fast there was no way to scream and wave the vehicle to slow down,” project manager Frank Talley said. “Everyone was alerted that this was happening. All but one was able to get out of the way.”

The crash occurred at 10:45 p.m. as 19 workers contracted by the Orange County Transportation Agency were cementing the freeway center divider south of Yorba Linda Boulevard, California Highway Patrol Officer Angel Johnson said.

Workers had closed down the fast lane and car-pool lane for about a mile, and had set up an orange truck with a large flashing arrow about 300 feet from their work site.

Johnson said Monnette sped diagonally across several lanes at 70 m.p.h., past the cones and the light, and slammed into Sandoval and the center divider. The impact threw him over a generator, which the car then hit and pushed for about 20 feet, Johnson said.

Talley said that moments before the crash, the car nearly hit his truck.

“I was in my car backing up, checking over the rail when this car went right in front of me. If I hadn’t backed up, he would have hit me,” Talley said.

Antonio Gonzalez Serna, 48, of Chino, one of two workers who jumped away from the oncoming car, said Wednesday that he had known Sandoval for four years and was still shaken.

“I haven’t been able to sleep since I got home at five in the morning. It’s my nerves,” he said.

Serna said he looked up from his work moments before the car plowed into Sandoval. The car crunched some orange cones and sped straight toward the three men, he recalled.

“I couldn’t say anything” and just jumped, Serna said.

After the accident, he avoided looking at where Sandoval’s body landed, he said. “It was impossible to look. I couldn’t look.”

The other worker, Adolpho Pacheco, 27, of Riverside, escaped with scrapes and bruises to a knee, officials said.

Monnette was in serious condition Wednesday night at UCI Medical Center in Orange. Johnson said he will be booked on suspicion of felony drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter.

Johnson said that when Monnette was arrested his breath smelled of alcohol and he told a CHP officer he had been drinking.

Tuesday’s fatal accident was the second in two days involving freeway workers in Southern California, officials said. On Monday night, two workers under contract to Caltrans in Paramount died after they were struck by a suspected drunk driver on the southbound Long Beach Freeway, Johnson said. The driver is in critical condition.

At a press conference Wednesday afternoon outside offices of the state Department of Transportation, officials expressed condolences for Sandoval’s family and said officials and workers were disturbed by the two accidents.

“It is very scary and very difficult for them to concentrate on their work, but they do it,” said Jim Chappelle, a Caltrans engineer. “They know that these things happen.”

The work on the Orange Freeway, construction of car-pool lanes, is being done by Ball, Ball & Brosamer Inc. Sandoval, who had signed on with the company for the two-week job, reportedly made about $21 per hour.

Serna said he first met Sandoval on a building construction site in Santa Ana. The two then met occasionally at other job sites from Irvine to Chino.

Sandoval’s wife was notified at their Los Angeles home late Tuesday, authorities said. The two came from El Salvador.