3 Hurt as Milk Truck Slams Into Pizza Hut

An out-of-control milk truck careened off a freeway exit ramp and shot through a busy intersection Tuesday, hitting a car before smashing into the side of a Pizza Hut takeout restaurant.

Three people were hurt in the 7:45 p.m. crash, including the driver of the runaway Adohr Farms truck, authorities said. Firefighters used hydraulic cutting tools to free the critically injured driver from the mangled truck cab.

Witnesses to the chaotic scene on Nordhoff Street said the driver, who appeared to have lost control of his 2 1/2-ton vehicle, swerved to avoid cars stopped at the light at the bottom of the San Diego Freeway offramp. The truck barreled onto the right-hand curb, tearing through a row of bushes instead of the cars.

“That guy saved our lives, pretty much,” said Robert Padovich, a passenger in a car waiting for the light. “He sacrificed himself.”

The truck hit a car in the intersection, slightly injuring two people, knocked over a telephone pole and crashed through the cinder block exterior wall of the Pizza Hut.

Paramedics took the three injured people to Northridge Hospital Medical Center.

No one was hurt inside the restaurant, a takeout place with no customer seating, said Jim Wells, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Stuart Perlitsh, a North Hills resident, was heading for the restaurant when he saw the truck slam into the building.

“If he had stayed on the [ramp], he would’ve taken out all those parked cars,” Perlitsh said. “I’d say his brakes went out. So he made his own lane. . . . He was coming down at a pretty good rate of speed, even after he took out that pole.”

Only a handful of employees were inside the restaurant. The impact knocked out the electricity and scattered pizza boxes over the floor, said a store manager who declined to give her name.

Outside the store, a crowd of onlookers watched as firefighters struggled to free the truck driver. Pieces of the shattered cab lay on the ground, a few feet from the gaping hole in the wall.

Police said they were not sure what caused the truck to lose control. Investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Valley Traffic Division were still examining the scene Tuesday night.