Police to Probe Fatal Crash : Tragedy: Inquiry will determine how fast a patrol car was traveling and how long its emergency signals were on before it collided with a truck. Three boys in San Pedro were killed.

Police Chief Willie L. Williams promised Tuesday a full investigation of how a police car, racing to the aid of other officers, collided with a truck in San Pedro, killing three young brothers and injuring seven other people.

Fernando Pacheco and his seven passengers were only three blocks from home, returning from a trip to a coin laundry, when their pickup was rammed Monday night in San Pedro. The three boys who died and another who was injured were riding without seat belts in the truck’s camper shell, police said.

Officials said the police car’s siren was blaring and its red lights were flashing when it rammed the truck. It was unclear how fast the car was traveling, whether it ran a traffic light at the intersection or how long its emergency signals were on before the collision.

Emphasizing that they were not assessing blame, police officials called the accident a sober reminder of the daily struggle that emergency vehicles and motorists face in sharing the road.

“There’s not a day you can’t see a police car, firetruck or ambulance trying to get down the street and people won’t get out of their way,” said Sgt. Don Linfield. “Citizens have to be aware that they have an obligation under the law to move out of the way for police cars.”

On Tuesday, Imelda Martinez Pacheco and her husband picked up their only surviving son from the hospital.

“My life is not going to go on,” the mother said in Spanish. “It’s a horrible tragedy.”

“It’s bad enough to lose one child,” said Eleanor R. Montano, a member of the county Human Relations Commission who is assisting the family, which previously lost a daughter to illness. “They have lost four. . . . They are all heartbroken.”

The father, Fernando Pacheco, 32, who was driving the truck, said he plans to contact an attorney. In an interview, he would not say who he believed was at fault for the accident. The Pachecos’ only surviving son, Fernando Evon Pacheco, 11, was released from a hospital with a broken arm.

The news rocked San Pedro, an ethnically diverse, tightknit neighborhood of Los Angeles where residents know police officers by their first names. Crisis counselors were sent to the schools that the boys attended.

Police released few details other than to say the police car was rushing to the aid of officers under “Code 3,” a circumstance that requires sirens and red lights.

Bystanders said they heard the police siren only a moment--one witness said “a split-second”--before they heard the crash.

“We’re all saddened,” said LAPD spokesman Cmdr. Tim McBride, noting that Harbor Division officers placed flowers Tuesday at the crash scene.

The police car was driven by Officer George Ichikawa, a 25-year police veteran. He and his partner, rookie Officer Keith Aulick, were treated for minor injuries and released from a hospital.

The officers were on their way to help other officers trying to break up a domestic fight at Cabrillo Beach when the collision occurred at 8:20 p.m. at 13th Street and Pacific Avenue.

The LAPD revised its driver-training policies after three officers were killed in a Downtown traffic accident in 1988. The new policy distinguishes between pursuing a suspect and responding to a call.

“What the officers need to know is that there is not just one type of Code 3 driving where you turn the red lights on and (press) the pedal to the metal and just go as fast as you can,” said Sgt. Jerry Powell, the officer in charge of the emergency vehicle training unit at the Police Academy.

Even when using the siren and red lights, officers are required to use “due care,” he said.

Three of the five children riding in the back of the truck, Prudencio Pacheco, 15, and his brothers Ricardo, 5, and Javier, 9, died at the scene. Eleven-year-old Fernando, who was released from the hospital Tuesday, also had been riding in the back, as had his cousin, Edgar Martinez, 9, who was in critical but stable condition with head injuries.

Riding in the cab was Pacheco; his wife, Imelda, 29, and her brother, Juan Pablo Martinez, 22. Martinez was in serious condition, police said.

Robert Evans, 28, who was a block away when he saw the police car whiz by, did not see the impact but heard it.

“There was a siren and then a smashing sound,” he said. Evans said that he was the first to reach the scene and that the truck, which had been traveling east on 13th Street, was lying on its side but facing the opposite direction.

The Pachecos lived three blocks from the accident site in a one-bedroom apartment on Palos Verdes Street. Evans said the children often showed up for basketball games at a nearby park.

“They were a close family, hard working people,” the manager of their apartment building said.

The Martinez family, which has three children, lives in a next-door unit, another neighbor said.