O.C. Register Deliverer Dies in Pickup Crash : Accident: Laguna shop owners and officials complain of dangerous curve where truck slammed into two stores.

A 28-year-old newspaper deliverer was killed Monday when his pickup truck jumped a curb on Coast Highway and crashed into a chocolate store, on a curve that has been the scene of repeated accidents, city officials and store owners said.

Tim John Voss of Laguna Hills was treated at the scene of the accident in the 200 block of Coast Highway and taken to South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach, where he died at 5 a.m., Sgt. Greg Bartz said. Voss had delivered the Orange County Register for more than 12 years and was in the middle of a paper route at the time of the accident, Bartz said.

Voss’ pickup left the road about 4:30 a.m., Bartz said. The truck careened into a surf shop and then into the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory.

“A whole wall is caved out, causing part of the ceiling to buckle,” said Jeanne Brown, owner of the chocolate store.

A spokesman for the Register said Voss’ manager finished his paper route for him.

Brown said the “90-degree” curve, with no stop sign, has been the cause of about two accidents every year.

“If there had been a barrier, maybe he wouldn’t have died,” Laguna Beach Councilman Wayne J. Baglin said.

Baglin said that, in the 25 years he has lived in the city, about 12 accidents have occurred at the scene of Monday’s accident.

Efforts by the city to put up a concrete safety rail in the last several years were thwarted after Caltrans rejected the designs, Baglin said. A design was finally approved earlier this year and construction is supposed to begin early next year, City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said. A California Department of Transportation spokeswoman said earlier plans were rejected because they did not meet the department’s criteria.

Frank said he was skeptical that a safety guard would have saved Voss’ life, because it would only have guided the pickup in a different direction.

“A barrier is not meant to protect the motorist, it is meant to protect the pedestrian walking on the sidewalk,” Frank said.

Police statistics at the deadly turn were not available Monday. But Christian Forshan, owner of Main Beach Sunwear, said the accident was the fourth to take out a “piece of the wall” of his surf shop in the past 20 years. The surf shop was open Monday.

“Each one of the businesses along that curve have been hit at least once,” Baglin said. “While the accidents have all been serious, I don’t remember anyone dying before.”

Voss was described as a hard worker by Bartz, who often saw the newspaper deliverer getting coffee at a local convenience store as both men headed for work early in the morning. Voss was deaf, Bartz said, but was an accomplished lip reader.

“He was the nicest kid you’d ever want to meet,” said Bartz, who last saw him minutes before the crash.