VENTURA : Woman Killed After Her Car Hits Trailer

A 42-year-old Oxnard woman died Thursday when she slammed her car into the back of a trailer loaded with scores of irrigation pipes, the California Highway Patrol reported.

Witnesses said Isabel Rosales was following a pickup truck driven by Juventino Lopez, 64, of Oxnard across the Santa Clara River bridge on Victoria Avenue near Ventura when she hit the truck’s trailer.

“She just kept going straight into the back of the truck,” said Rick Landof, a Port Hueneme research analyst who saw the collision. “She didn’t try to stop. She didn’t hit the brakes, nothing.”

Landof’s father, Bill Landof of Oxnard, said he ran to the car and tried to save the woman. “I tried to get a pulse on her neck and her arm, but there was no pulse,” he said.

Two red markers hung from separate pipes at the end of the trailer, warning drivers that it was moving slowly. A small brown teddy bear lay across the back of Rosales’ car amid a sheet of crushed glass.

No one else was in the car with the woman.

After the impact, Lopez’s vehicle dragged the car several hundred feet until witnesses got him to stop, CHP Sgt. Don Hatch said.

“He was unaware he had even been rear-ended,” said Hatch, who said preliminary investigations suggested that Lopez was not at fault.

CHP Officer Curt Rhyne was the first official to arrive at the scene of the 4:10 p.m. accident.

“Maybe the sun blinded her, maybe she didn’t have any (sun) glasses on,” Rhyne said. “But there were no skid marks.”

Lopez was driving a truck owned by the Seaview Growers of Oxnard.

He had been hauling a load of 3-inch irrigation pipes south on Victoria Avenue at about 30 m.p.h. when Rosales crashed into his vehicle at about 45 m.p.h., Hatch said.