12 Hurt as O.C. Bus Hits Parked Truck : Accident: Woman among the commuters is seriously injured in downtown L.A. crash during morning rush hour.

A transit bus carrying commuters from Orange County into Los Angeles struck an illegally parked big-rig truck near downtown Thursday, injuring 12 people, including one woman who suffered serious back and neck injuries, authorities said.

The Orange County Transportation Authority bus with 25 passengers was headed west on 6th Street when it slammed into the truck shortly before 9 a.m. on a stretch where curbside parking is banned from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m, said Lt. Dan Hills of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Central Traffic Division.

Bus driver Angelo Manuel Ordonez, 26, told police that he tried to merge out of the far-right lane where the truck was parked but that he was blocked by a car, Hills said.

Glass, torn fenders and crushed potatoes that had fallen out of the big rig littered the street as passengers waited for paramedics to take them to hospitals. “It just took off the front end of the bus,” said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Phil Weireter, pointing to the bus that was stuck to the big rig.

Authorities said trucks are allowed to park on the street during prohibited hours if the drivers are inside, waiting to unload goods.

The trucker, Carlos Yanez, said he had just gotten out of his rig and walked across the street to a warehouse to ask about unloading 46,000 pounds of potatoes from Corona when he heard a loud bang.

“When I turned around, glass was flying out of the bus and falling to the ground,” Yanez said. “There was one lady on the floor of the bus. She had cuts on her leg and forehead. She was pretty shaken up.

“Nothing like this has ever happened to me before,” said Yanez, a Corona man who said he has been driving trucks for 15 years.

Trucker Ronnie Martinez was sitting inside his small truck just in front of Yanez’s rig when he saw the bus veer to the right and crash. Without the truck behind him, he said, the bus could have crashed into him.

“I looked through my rear-view mirror and I saw the windows (on the bus) get punched out,” Martinez said. “It dragged the trailer away from the curb and stopped. When I came out of the truck, the windows were already gone and there was debris everywhere. I got a blanket from my truck and gave it to the lady inside the bus.”

A woman in her mid-40s suffered neck and back injuries and was transported to White Memorial Hospital in East Los Angeles, Weireter said.

Two others sustained “minor to serious neck and back injuries” and were taken to California Medical Center, Weireter said. Nine passengers were taken to Los Angeles County-USC Hospital and Good Samaritan Hospital, and 12 were examined at the scene and released, authorities said.

Lavada Jurescak of Anaheim Hills was among the uninjured passengers. Jurescak, who said she rides the bus every day to work in downtown Los Angeles, was sitting on the right-hand side of the bus when the vehicle crashed into the truck.

“It knocked out the right side of the bus completely,” she said. “I didn’t really see what happened. It all happened very fast.”

According to the Department of Motor Vehicles, Ordonez had been cited for two driving infractions in 1992. On Feb. 18, he was ticketed for driving without a seat belt. And on July 6, he was cited for speeding.

In 1991, a school bus he was driving was hit from behind while it was stationary, said David Daley, regional vice president for Laidlaw Transit Inc.

“It wasn’t his fault so we did not count it against him when we hired him,” Daley said.

Fare Box * More than 13,000 people are transported from Fullerton to Los Angeles each month. That’s 156,000 passengers a year. * The cost per trip is $3 one way. A traveling pass can be obtained for $107 a month. * Eight express buses travel on Route 721 from Orange County to Los Angeles. Source: OCTD