Crash Investigators Search Trucking Offices

Half a year after one of its drivers died in a fiery crash into the Ventura River, the Saticoy office of a trucking company on Wednesday surrendered documents to state and federal agents apparently investigating whether corporate officials falsified work and inspection records.

The Saticoy raid was one of several throughout the day for Atlas Bulk Inc., whose offices and other buildings were also searched at its headquarters in Paramount and at locations in four other cities.

The Dec. 2 accident in Ventura, which killed 23-year-old driver Carlos Alonzo Jr. of Oxnard and dropped thousands of gallons of gasoline into the Ventura River bed, was one of at least two recent fatalities for the company. An accident in Petaluma last week started a similar fire and also cost the driver his life.

Sources close to the case said authorities are investigating to determine, among other things, whether the company overworked its drivers, then doctored records to disguise the practice.

Copies of the search warrants showed that among the documents being sought were inspection reports for the company’s trucks and logs documenting the work hours of its employees. Authorities also were given permission to seize training records, accident reports and shipping manifests, as well as the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all Atlas employees.

John Hoos, a spokesman for the Los Angeles office of the FBI, would not comment on the aim of the searches, which were performed by FBI agents, California Highway Patrol officers and representatives of the federal Department of Transportation.

Hoos said the affidavit in support of the search warrants was sealed. He declined to release it or to comment about its contents.

A spokeswoman for the CHP in Sacramento also declined to comment, saying only that six businesses and one residence were searched. She would not say why.

Brad Johansson, the president of Atlas Bulk, said authorities had arrived at several of his company offices seeking records; he stressed that the company was cooperating.

“We had a fatality accident, and we’re under investigation,” said Johansson, who described the inquiry as a routine response to the Petaluma crash. “This is more or less standard procedure.”

Atlas is a major shipping firm and transporter of hazardous materials.

In the December accident, Alonzo lost control of his truck, which rolled off the roadway and over the railing. The rig then dropped into the dry Ventura River bottom and exploded.

The truck was carrying more than 8,000 gallons of gasoline, and officials estimated that half of that burned, touching off a small brush fire, while the rest seeped into the soil. It took more than six weeks to clean up the contaminated site.

Then, on July 4, an Atlas truck exiting Highway 101 in Petaluma crashed, dumping 9,000 gallons of gasoline and causing a fire so hot it turned the asphalt on the freeway offramp into ash. The driver, 25-year-old Michael Scott Benoit of Martinez, was killed in the blaze.

A CHP official said the truck appeared to be traveling too fast on the offramp, which had a posted limit of 20 mph.

CHP investigators also attributed the Ventura crash to excessive speed, saying that the truck was traveling close to 55 mph on a ramp with a suggested speed of 35 mph, said Ventura County CHP Officer Dave Cockrill.

Alonzo’s family in Oxnard reacted with relief when told that the FBI was investigating the company he had been employed with for only a few months before his death, saying they always questioned the official version of the cause of the accident.

Although they had never heard any complaints from Alonzo that he was overworked, his mother, Rosie Alonzo, remains skeptical about the CHP’s finding of unsafe speed.

“My son was a cautious driver,” said Rosie Alonzo, whose husband Carlos Sr. is also a truck driver and taught Carlos how to drive big rigs. “He took that turn ever since he had been working with the company. Nobody in their right mind would be driving that fast. Carlos took that turn all the time, and all of a sudden he crashes? No.”

Rosie Alonzo said her son had been driving trucks since he was 16 and had worked for several produce trucking companies before taking the job at Atlas.

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Carlos Alonzo Jr. lived with his aunt and uncle, Mercy and Johnny Aceves, up until the time he died. Mercy Aceves recalled that the day he died he was in good spirits and well rested.

The family speculated that perhaps the accident was caused by a faulty fifth axle on the driver’s side. In the CHP accident report, an Atlas driver named Michael Koch wrote a statement saying that he, Carlos Alonzo and another driver had reported problems with a spring on the fifth axle nearly one month before the deadly accident.

Koch said in the CHP report that he had notified the company’s mechanics about the problem and that it was apparently fixed two weeks before the accident. Koch also added in the CHP report that an Atlas mechanic told him “it’s OK now but we’ll call it back for repairs, damaged but safe to drive.”

The Atlas company is a far-flung operation, with offices throughout Southern California, as well as in Northern California, San Diego, Chico and elsewhere.

Warrants for the searches performed Wednesday show that Atlas offices and other facilities were searched in Paramount, Montebello, Bakersfield, Saticoy, Paso Robles and Templeton.

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According to the warrants, information was being sought for possible violations of two federal statutes, one of which governs the transport of hazardous materials. The other makes it an offense to knowingly falsify statements or records.

No arrests were announced, but the statutes cited in the warrants carry possible jail terms as well as fines.

The case has been assigned to a federal prosecutor based in the Central District of California. That prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Atty. William Carter, confirmed that seven locations were searched Wednesday, but would not say more about the case.

Johansson, the company president, said he expected the investigation could be concluded quickly and that the company would be cleared of any wrongdoing.

“We’re cooperating and making our records available,” he said. “We’ll go from there.”

Times correspondent Scott Hadly contributed to this story.

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