Baby Released; Mother Hit by Truck Improves

A Ventura woman who was crushed against a wall--seconds after pushing her 18-month-old daughter from the path of a pickup truck driven by a suspected drunk driver--was upgraded from critical to serious condition Wednesday.

Suzanne Erickson was in Ventura County Medical Center’s intensive care unit with a fractured pelvis and leg and internal injuries. The 26-year-old single mother of two was hit Tuesday afternoon on Telegraph Road at Hoover Street.

Her blond daughter, Destiny, was released from the hospital Wednesday after suffering cuts and abrasions when Erickson flung her stroller more than 20 feet moments before the truck’s impact.

“I have no doubt in my mind had the mother not done what she did we would have two seriously injured people, not just one,” said Cpl. John Turner, a traffic investigator with the Ventura Police Department. “So in that regard, she’s a hero.”

The driver of the pickup, 77-year-old Carrol James Smith of Ventura, was released from Ventura County Jail on Wednesday on $10,000 bail. Smith has no serious automobile-related convictions, but was charged in 1991 with failing to wear a seat belt, a misdemeanor. He now faces a felony charge of driving under the influence of alcohol and causing injury, police said.

Smith either fell asleep or lost consciousness before his truck struck a curb, traveled almost 50 feet along a sidewalk, smashed into a palm tree and crushed Erickson, Turner said.

Smith’s wife, reached at their east Ventura home Wednesday, declined to comment on the accident.

Erickson’s parents, Joel and Sheila Erickson, said they were not surprised by their daughter’s actions.

“I don’t think as a mother she would consider herself a hero, it’s just something moms do,” said Sheila Erickson, who told her daughter Wednesday how the accident had occurred. “She lives for her kids; they are her life.”

The accident came as Suzanne Erickson’s life was improving.

After ending the rocky relationship that produced Destiny and a son, Joseph, 2, she moved into her parents’ east Ventura home last November, her mother said.

A full-time student at Ventura College, where she was taking classes in history and archeology, Suzanne also had a job in March working the graveyard shift at Weyerhaeuser Co.’s Santa Paula corrugated box plant so her days would be left free to take care of her children. “Here we’ve got a 26-year-old girl, with two kids, a full load at school and her whole life ahead of her,” Sheila Erickson said. “Now she’s got that all on hold.”

Destiny suffered no trauma, her grandmother said, and promptly messed up the kitchen after she came home from the hospital. Suzanne Erickson is expected to remain in intensive care for about a week and probably will face 12 to 18 months of therapy.

“She’ll be . . . basically learning to walk again,” Sheila Erickson said. “I didn’t pay much attention to the Mothers Against Drunk [Driving] people, but this hits too close to home.”