Driver Survives Dive Off Freeway Overpass : Accident: He suffers only minor injuries. A police officer died at same site Monday.

Luckily for Tony MouFarrege, history does not always repeat itself the same way.

MouFarrege on Thursday became the second person to drive off the quake-collapsed Antelope Valley Freeway overpass--sailing a van through a 30-foot dive that ended in a perfect nose-down landing in a bulldozer scoop, like a movie stunt.

Unlike the overpass’ first victim--a motorcycle police officer who was killed--MouFarrege received only minor injuries.

“It’s amazing that he survived such an impact,” said California Highway Patrol Sgt. Ernie Garcia, who said MouFarrege apparently “became disoriented” and did not heed the barricade blocking the entrance to the freeway ramp, which now ends in mid-air. Also, observers said, the sun would have been in MouFarrege’s eyes.

According to CHP officers and witnesses, MouFarrege, a supervisor with Quality Catering, had dropped off an employee under the sheared-off section of ramp shortly after 1 p.m., to provide food for highway workers gathered there.

Instead of returning down San Fernando Road, however, MouFarrege drove up the ramp and, apparently without slowing, hurtled off the edge, Garcia said. Many of the 30 or so highway workers gazed in stunned amazement as his blue and gray van dropped like a bomb into the bulldozer scoop and sat there, tail in the air.

As Los Angeles County firefighters freed him from the wreckage, MouFarrege repeated in a daze several times: “I’m alive, I’m alive.”

The accident took place at the same spot where Los Angeles police motorcycle Officer Clarence Wayne Dean fell to his death Monday shortly after the quake severed the ramp. But MouFarrege, 43, of Sun Valley, received only minor injuries and was in fair condition late Thursday at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia, according to a hospital spokeswoman.

“He must have gotten lost,” said Maria E. Castro, the catering employee he dropped off.

Times staff writer Abigail Goldman contributed to this story.