6 Die as Pipes Fall From Truck Onto Road

Six people were killed in a horrific crash in the still of the Mojave Desert early Monday when three huge concrete pipes tumbled off a flatbed truck and smashed into two oncoming vehicles.

The driver of the truck was arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated and other charges.

“This is probably the most horrendous incident we’ve seen,” San Bernardino County coroner’s spokesman Randy Emon said from the remote desert highway. “This is a terrible scene.”

The occupants of the two vehicles probably never knew what hit them and died “in a heartbeat,” said a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.

Killed in their minivan were a family from Redlands, identified by the CHP as Randy and Melissa Ledford, their son, Lonny, 9, and their daughter, Skyler, 6. The young children had been visiting their grandfather for a week in the Fresno area and their parents had driven there on Friday to bring them home, neighbors said.

The names of the other couple, who were traveling in a sedan, were not released. They were from the Las Vegas area, authorities said.

The driver of the truck, identified by the CHP as Richard Sommerville, 59, of Riverside, was not injured. He was booked into the San Bernardino County Jail in Rancho Cucamonga on three felony counts, including vehicular manslaughter and driving while intoxicated. He was being held on $100,000 bond, a jail spokesman said.

The crash occurred shortly after midnight on California 58, a flat, two-lane stretch of road west of California 395, between Kramer and Boron.

Sommerville was traveling west at an unknown speed, according to the CHP. As he was making a gentle, sweeping turn to his right, his load of three 30-foot-long, 3-foot-diameter concrete pipes shifted, breaking their nylon restraining straps, accident investigators said.

Each pipe weighed more than 10,000 pounds, said Jim Alves, vice president of First Class Service, a Tracy, Calif.-based trucking company that employed Sommerville.

The pipes fell off the flatbed and smashed into the two eastbound vehicles.

Both vehicles were demolished, and the sedan erupted in flames. Luggage from the vehicles was strewn across the roadway, and the rolling pipes left white gouges in the asphalt before they finally came to a stop on the desert shoulder of the highway.

The pipes were manufactured in Adelanto and were being trucked to Dixon, near Sacramento, for a water project, Alves said.

Sommerville had worked for the company for a year, and had more than 20 years of professional driving experience, Alves said.

“It’s absolutely horrible,” Alves said of the crash. “Our hearts go out to their families. We are a family-owned business. This is such a tragedy, and we’re all so affected by this as well. I’m too upset to discuss it.”

Neighbors of the Ledford family said the four had lived on a quiet Redlands cul-de-sac for about three years, and were known as a loving, tight-knit family. Randy Ledford was a plumber and his wife was a full-time homemaker who made crafts such as painted T-shirts for local craft fairs.

“They both lived for their kids,” said Matt Fashempour, choking back tears.