Coming Face to Face With Sudden Tragedy on the Streets of L.A.

Instant death. It can happen to anyone who travels by car on the streets and freeways of Los Angeles. It could happen to anyone from Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher to a 15-year-old with a learner’s permit.

You’re obeying all the rules. Buckled in. Cruising under the speed limit. Not tailgating.

Then, suddenly, like a missile fired from a MiG-29, a runaway car bursts through the red light and explodes into your door. Instantly, you’re dead.

I saw the results of such a crash--sudden death--last Saturday morning on my way to work at The Times’ Valley office in Chatsworth.

Judith Lopez of Sylmar was driving her Toyota Corolla station wagon east on Parthenia Avenue in Northridge. In the back seat were two of her three daughters--Beatrice, 8 and Jamie, 6.

As they crossed the intersection at Tampa Avenue, disaster struck. A white Ford Courier pickup traveling at up to 70 mph blitzed through the red light, according to witnesses, and slammed into the little station wagon.

I came across the scene seconds later. Having grown up in Los Angeles, having seen thousands of cars littering the side of the road, my initial reaction after a quick glance was to drive on to work. It was just another accident in the city.

But a noise caught my attention--the ominous one-note sound of a horn blaring nonstop. It was coming from the pickup. Inside, the driver was slumped over the steering wheel, but the truck didn’t appear to have suffered major damage.

Then I looked at the mangled Toyota. As bystanders ran toward it, I knew something bad had happened. I parked and ran over too.

The station wagon had been bashed in on the driver’s side, making its shape more like a “C” than a rectangle.

Lopez lay crushed and dead, her hand hanging from the broken twisted frame of the passenger side window. In the crumpled back seat, her two young daughters were motionless, their bodies surrounded by contorted seats and metal.

Suddenly, an onlooker saw Jamie, the younger girl, move in the back seat.

“She’s alive,” someone screamed. “One of the girls is moving.”

The girl softly moaned. Pinned in the crushed back seat, she struggled to breathe. Twisted metal pressed against her neck, apparently blocking her ability to breathe. Another bystander and I reached into the wreckage and began trying to pull the metal from her throat.

Next to Jamie, Beatrice took her last, gasping breath.

Frantically, we yanked at the metal pinning Jamie’s neck and pulled it out enough to relieve some pressure. Someone placed a towel near the girl’s head.

“Mija, mija, you’re going to be all right,” onlooker Sylvia Vasquez said, patting Jamie on the forehead.

What a frustrating, helpless feeling, seeing that girl trapped in that ghastly scene. We looked around, hoping the paramedics would arrive and save her. Finally, behind the moans of the child, the sound of sirens was heard. It was about 8:50 a.m., roughly 10 minutes after the fatal impact.

The shocked child wailed in agony. A minute later, the paramedics and fire engines arrived. They swarmed the Toyota. At times, 15 paramedics and firefighters surrounded the vehicle, trying desperately to get the little girl out.

As I watched, pushed back from the car by police, I saw blood running down my hand. I must have cut it on the metal we were pulling.

Firemen using crowbars and the hydraulically powered “jaws of life” pried at the right rear door and hatchback. After nearly 15 minutes, they were able to reach the girl, her leg badly broken, her insides injured. As she kicked and screamed, they placed the child on a gurney and raced her off to a hospital.

Another ambulance took the driver of the pickup to Providence Holy Cross Medical Center, where he was treated and released.

Witnesses at the scene said the driver, who was not identified by police, was speeding and had blown through a red light.

The LAPD said that the accident was still under investigation and that the driver had not been arrested. At least two witnesses told police they saw the pickup’s driver suffer what appeared to be a seizure, a block before he sped through the intersection.

“The driver has not been booked or charged, and we have no reason at this point to believe any criminal activity took place,” LAPD Lt. Horace Frank said this week. “However, the investigation is continuing.”

I drove on to work, where I wrapped my finger with a couple Band-Aids. Every time I looked at it, I felt even closer to that little girl.

A couple hours later, at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, shellshocked family members arrived. All eight were crying.

After two operations on her broken leg, Jamie’s condition was listed as serious but stable. She would survive.

“She still doesn’t know what happened, doesn’t know about her mom and sister,” said her cousin Claudia Veliz, 23, of Panorama City. “The doctor said she should be fine and she should be able to walk with no problem. Jamie is a very active little girl, very stubborn.”

“She liked, she likes--look, I’m talking about her like she’s not here anymore. She likes Britney Spears and ‘N Sync. She’s just a 6-year-old Dennis the Menace.”

Jamie did everything with her sister Beatrice, Veliz said, adding that Judith’s life revolved around her three daughters. Veliz said her tight-knit family will take care of Jamie and her 15-year-old sister. Judith was separated from her husband. Thursday as Jamie lay in a hospital bed, Judith and Beatrice were laid to rest.

I went to the funeral. There were more than 500 people at St. Didacus Church in Sylmar. Msgr. Peter Amy preached about how mother and daughter had gone to the most beautiful of all places and someday their family would join them in paradise. As the choir sang “Lord, You Have Come,” two white caskets, one standard size, one small, were wheeled down the long main aisle of the church. Walking alongside were 12 pallbearers. Some of them were wearing sunglasses inside the church. They looked like tough guys, except they were crying.

That small cut on my hand was almost completely healed by now, almost invisible. I kind of wish it had left a scar.