Freeway Pedestrian Is Killed

A man was killed Sunday night after being hit by a truck while trying to cross the southbound San Diego Freeway, the California Highway Patrol reported Monday.

The 66-year-old victim made it safely across the northbound lanes, the center divider and the southbound car-pool lane just south of the Magnolia Avenue exit and was walking into the next southbound lane when he was hit by a truck about 10:30 p.m., said Officer Lyle Whitten, a CHP spokesman.

The driver of the truck, 50-year-old Stephen T. Daniels of Carlsbad, said he tried to avoid hitting the man.

“I tried to pull into the diamond (car-pool) lane, in the opposite direction he was walking, to avoid him but he hesitated,” Daniels said from his home in a telephone interview Monday. “If he’d only kept going, I wouldn’t have hit him.”

It is unknown why the man was walking on the freeway, Whitten said.

Daniels said he was traveling home from a weekend holiday in Santa Barbara with his wife and two children, ages 10 and 15.

“It was one of the best vacations we’ve had in years until that happened,” Daniels said, his voice breaking with emotion.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene by a doctor who was driving behind Daniels. The identity of the victim, whose last known address was in Santa Ana, was withheld pending notification of his relatives, coroner’s officials said.

Daniels urged officials to take further steps to curb freeway pedestrians.

“Down here in San Diego, we get a lot of (undocumented immigrants) trying to cross the freeways. When they’re caught, they just get deported. Maybe if they spent a few days in jail it would keep them from doing it again. They put everybody at risk, not just themselves,” Daniels said.

“I feel very sorry for his family, and I’ll never get over this, but we’ve got to do something to keep people from walking on the freeways,” he said.