Mother, Son Die in Mysterious Fall Off Freeway Span

A Moorpark mother and her autistic son, on a middle-of-the-night drive to lull the boy to sleep, somehow fell to their deaths from a high freeway bridge Wednesday after pulling over with a flat tire.

Law enforcement officers said they have no idea yet whether the mysterious deaths of the mother and child involved foul play or were just a tragic accident.

Jacqueline “Jackie” Bickmann, 29, was pronounced dead at the scene. It took paramedics about 45 minutes, hacking their way through brush in the darkness, to find her crumpled body near the banks of a stream more than 100 feet below the bridge, which connects California 23 and the Ronald Reagan Freeway.

Her 4-year-old son, Garett, lay a few feet away, still showing a faint pulse. He was rushed to Simi Valley Hospital but died soon after arrival.

Ventura County Sheriff’s Department investigators had few clues as to why the woman and her son went over the freeway’s hip-high concrete rail.

“They could have sat on the wall and fell, she could have jumped, someone could have pushed her--we don’t know,” Senior Deputy Ed Tumbleson said.

The department is pursuing the case as a “suspicious” death, Tumbleson said. “It’s being treated with the same care as if it were a homicide,” he said, adding that the department did not yet consider it a homicide.

Bickmann’s husband, Lawrence Bickmann, could not be reached for comment Wednesday. A man answering the door at the family’s home on Skyglen Court declined comment.

Family members issued a brief statement about 5:30 p.m. through the Sheriff’s Department, which read in part, “She was a full-time mom devoted to her two children . . . and the family is grieving.”

Jacqueline Bickmann, who was less than a week from her 30th birthday, also left behind an 18-month-old daughter, Angela.

Just a week ago, Jacqueline Bickmann and her friend Vicki Moreno were discussing what they would do for their birthdays this weekend.

“We were joking about what our husbands were getting for us on our birthday and she was laughing,” Moreno said. “I’m just in shock right now. I just got this chill right through me. I can’t believe it.”

Friends describe Jacqueline Bickmann as a perky person who was a member of the Moorpark Mom’s Club, a group of local homemakers. She was also active in a parent advisory committee that worked toward improving facilities and programs for special education students.

Doctors diagnosed Garett with autism when he was about 2 years old. The disorder, which affects about five in 10,000 children, severely impairs the victim’s ability to speak or adapt to his environment and relate to other people.

“She was just very upset when he was first diagnosed,” said Moreno, who has two autistic sons. “She didn’t know what that meant. [Autism] is a scary term when it’s first brought up.”

She was, however, supported by friends and mothers who had children with autism and regularly took her son for treatment at the Child Development Center at Simi Valley Hospital. She was pleased that his motor and speech skills began improving, friends said.

“She was actually feeling well about Garett,” Moreno said. “He was doing well and great with speech therapy.”

Tumbleson said Jacqueline left her home about 2 a.m., hoping a drive in the family’s GMC Jimmy would make Garett sleepy.

At 3:17 a.m., California Highway Patrol officers noticed the vehicle parked on the far right side of the freeway’s southbound lanes, about midway across the bridge. The right front tire was flat, leaving marks in the road as it deflated.

The officers stopped to help but could not find the driver. Pulling out their flashlights, they leaned over the bridge’s low concrete wall and saw the bodies below.

*

It took paramedics nearly 40 minutes to reach the bodies, stranded in a broad swath of rushes and weeds along the Arroyo Simi, hundreds of yards from the closest streets. “Access was a problem,” Medtrans paramedic Rob Rolfe said. “We ended up scrambling down the side of the bridge, down a pretty steep embankment.”

Then it took time to find the bodies in the reeds and grasses, Rolfe said.

When Rolfe arrived, the woman was dead. The child still had a pulse but had stopped breathing. A CHP officer performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the boy, Rolfe said.

“It was clear from the trauma to their bodies that they came off the bridge,” Rolfe said.

The paramedics hiked east across the dry arroyo and then along the railroad tracks for about a mile before reaching the ambulance. The boy was taken to Simi Valley Hospital, where he died without ever regaining consciousness.

Autopsies showed the mother had died from multiple blunt force injuries, while her son died of blunt force neck and abdominal injuries, senior medical examiner Craig Stevens said. The injuries were consistent with a fall from a great height.

Although the manner of death is still undetermined, pending the investigation, Stevens said the bodies showed no evidence of a struggle or foul play.

*

The incident left few clues for investigators. By late Wednesday no witnesses had been found. Deputies were asking that anyone who might have driven that stretch of road early Wednesday call Detective Danny Thompson at 654-2340 during business hours.

“I’m hoping that, with getting the info out tonight, we’ll get a couple of calls tomorrow,” Tumbleson said.

Standing beside the Jimmy before it was towed away Wednesday morning, Tumbleson noted the bridge is a treacherous place to stand. Big rigs rumbling by send shudders through the pavement, and winds can whip up quickly.

The death could have been an accident, he said. But one that left little evidence behind.

“We have no information to lead us,” Tumbleson said.

Several of the Bickmanns’ neighbors, stunned by the news, declined to talk about the family Wednesday, several saying they were still too shaken.

One woman, who asked not to be identified, said simply that they were a good family. She felt for Lawrence Bickmann.

“The poor guy,” she said. “I just can’t believe it.”