Cables From Blown Tire Pull 3-Year-Old to His Death

A 3-year-old boy was killed in a freak accident when steel cables from a tire blowout sliced through the floor of a mini-bus and snatched the sleeping child from his mother’s lap onto Interstate 5 in Oceanside, the California Highway Patrol said Monday.

Ramon Prado Jr. was killed when a rear tire of the mini-bus exploded and the snake-like cables broke through the floor of the vehicle, ensnaring the boy, CHP spokesman Jerry Bohrer said.

Ramon was struck and killed by the mini-bus and one or more cars on northbound Interstate 5 about 8:20 p.m. Saturday, San Diego County coroner’s spokesman Cal Vine said.

His mother, Berta Galvan, was treated at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside and released Sunday night.

No one else was hurt in the accident, which stunned the 15 passengers on the mini-bus and bewildered CHP officers.

“The odds of anything like this ever happening is astronomical,” Bohrer said. “I have been an officer for 26 years, and I have never seen anything like this before.”

The 8-year-old Ford mini-bus, owned by Huntington Park-based Transportes Fronteras, was shuttling passengers from San Diego to Los Angeles when the rear tire blew and the cables ripped through the one-inch-thick plywood and plastic foam floor, Jose Lopez, a spokesman for the company, said.

The family was headed from Michoacan, Mexico, to Santa Ana when the accident occurred.

Two of the buses in the Transportes Fronteras fleet inspected by CHP officials in February were rated unsatisfactory based on maintenance records, driver records and condition of the buses, CHP spokesman John Davis said. The vehicle involved in Saturday’s accident was not among those examined.

Davis said the plywood and plastic foam floor does not violate standards, but as a result of the accident, the CHP is “going to make recommendations to manufacturers on reinforcing the body of the vehicles with steel in the area of the wheel wells.”

“The tire incident is the kind of thing we see on a regular basis,” Davis said, “but the penetration of the tire into that vehicle is very rare and that is what alarms us.”

“Maybe the tire was defective,” said Joel Lopez, Transportes Fronteras president. “The floor didn’t have any problems that we knew about.

“We’re just a small family company,” Joel Lopez said. “The driver hasn’t been able to sleep for three days.”

On Monday, about 25 teary-eyed relatives gathered at Ramon’s Santa Ana home to watch a videotape of the child frolicking in the waves at a Colima, Mexico, beach last week.

The family had planned to meet for a Mother’s Day dinner, but the small living room, decorated with pictures of Ramon and three siblings, was filled with tears on Monday.

“The loss was so sad because it was Mother’s Day and (later this month it) was going to be his (Ramon’s) birthday,” said his aunt, Julie Galvan, 25.

Omphroy reported from San Diego and Young from Orange County.