Thread: 2006 : MEXICAN TRUCK INVOLVED IN FATAL CRASH IN SAN DIEGO

Truck in fatal crash appears to have had no violations

By: JO MORELAND - Staff Writer

Last modified Wednesday, February 16, 2005 11:48 PM PST

CARLSBAD ---- A big rig from Mexico that stalled on Interstate 5 this week and was rear-ended by a van in a fatal crash that killed the van's three occupants, does not appear to have a history of safety violations, California Highway Patrol authorities said Wednesday.

A Carlsbad couple, Robert and Marie Jennings, both 67, and their 19-year-old grandson, MiraCosta College student David Michael Jennings II, died in the pre-dawn crash Tuesday in the freeway's southbound lanes.

The truck lost its drive train and stalled in the No. 4 lane about 10 minutes before the 5:15 a.m. accident south of Carmel Valley Road, Officer Mark Gregg, Highway Patrol spokesman, said Wednesday.

"We had a couple of people say, 'Yes, I saw it. I managed to avoid it,' " Gregg said.

He said the truck's hazard lights were flashing and the driver didn't try to leave the cab in the dark to take additional safety precautions in the full-speed traffic.

Meanwhile, friends and family of the victims were making final arrangements and sharing memories Wednesday at the home of Robert and Marie Jennings, who had opened their Shale Court house to their grandson while he attended MiraCosta.

David Jennings II was in his second year at the college, planning to transfer to UC San Diego this fall to continue his pre-med studies, said his father, David Jennings, of Beavercreek, Ohio.

"We will miss the goodness in him ... that he used to touch everything around him," Jennings said in a phone interview from the Jennings' Carlsbad home Wednesday afternoon.

The father said he doesn't hold the truck driver "responsible for any of this."

"It was an accident," Jennings said. "I hold no animosity towards the trucking company, if everything was in order, as the investigator said."

Wayne Hartwig, motor carrier unit manager for the Highway Patrol's Border Division in San Diego, said the truck is owned by Transportes De Baja California in Tijuana.

The company has at least eight big rig tractors and 35 trailers, Hartwig said.

Six violations were noted on the company's carrier citation history within the past 10 months at the Border Patrol's Otay Mesa inspection area, said the unit manager.

Hartwig said preliminary investigation indicated four of those citations did not involve the stalled truck. He said he hadn't been able to trace the other two violations to specific Transportes De Baja trucks.

At the Jennings' home, plans were made to hold a memorial service some time Friday evening for David Jennings II at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Carlsbad.

In his biography on the MiraCosta Web site, David Jennings II talked about his plans and how he liked to spend time on the computer, hang out with his friends, bodyboard and surf.

The MiraCosta student ambassador encouraged high school students to stay in school and attend college, worked with special-needs students, and was a part-time employee at an Encinitas store, said Jan Moberly, MiraCosta coordinator of school relations and outreach.

"He was a joy," Moberly said. "He just couldn't do enough."

Counselors were helping students cope Wednesday with the death of their friend, who spearheaded the "Run for the Fund" 5K scholarship fund-raiser last October.

David Jennings, who ran the 5K with his only son, said he and his wife, Kristi, who have four daughters, will establish a MiraCosta memorial scholarship for transfer students.

An 11 a.m. service will be held Saturday for Robert and Marie Jennings at St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Carlsbad, said their daughter, Sheryl McGurk of Alexandria, Va.

She said her parents, married 45 years, were on their way to the Bahamas to see their third child, Bob Jennings, perform in a play when they died.

"My father was in the first graduating class of the Air Force Academy in 1959," McGurk said. "His wife adored, loved and supported him for his career of 27 1/2 years. He retired as a colonel."

Her parents continued to be busy over the years, vacationing in Carlsbad before moving there in 2002, she said.

On Monday morning, Marie Jennings attended a rally in Carlsbad to try to prevent the city from drastically lowering Lake Calavera for a dam repair project, citing the lake as one of the "scenic things we still have left."

"We got to spend a lot of wonderful times together this past year," McGurk said about the entire family. "The only comfort we're finding is we know our parents and David went to heaven together."

Contact staff writer Jo Moreland at (760) 740-3524 or jmoreland@nctimes.com.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/02 ... _16_05.txt

I have a CDL. When you are broken down you have to set out the triangles. It's the law. They even tell you how far they have to be from the truck so drivers have some notice. Sitting in the cab is not an option.

What was a Mexican truck doing in the U.S. in 2005?

A snippet from
eagleforum.org

Over the last several years, there have been many fatal accidents caused by cars and trucks driven by Mexicans, legal and illegal. The most tragic and costly truck accident in Midwest history, resulting in the incineration of Rev. Scott Willis's six children in 1994, was caused by a Mexican truck driver's inability to comprehend warnings in the English language.

The story:

"Will some of the people I appoint stray off the right path? That is a fear that haunts me. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. We all have been guilty of errors in judgment.... But you can rest assured that I will do my very best to honor your trust in me. If I make a mistake, I'll tell you, and we'll try again."

--Gov. George Ryan in his Jan. 11, 1999, inaugural speech.

Late in the 1990s, two young federal prosecutors in Chicago prepared a two-page memo that outlined allegations of corruption in the office of George Ryan, then the Illinois secretary of state. The prosecutors had evidence that unqualified truckers were bribing Ryan's employees to obtain driver's licenses. Just as bad, somebody on Ryan's staff had thwarted an internal investigation of these dangerous criminal acts.

The memo prompted piercing questions about a horror that had occurred on Election Day 1994. That was the day Rev. Duane "Scott" Willis and his wife, Janet, voted--their church was the polling place--before driving to Wisconsin with most of their family to visit one of their sons. For Illinois secretary of state, both Willises selected George Ryan.

Later that day, on a Milwaukee expressway, an accident that involved one of those illicit truckers incinerated six Willis children. Ryan would later insist--angrily and often--that the trucker, Ricardo Guzman, had been legally licensed. No problem here in Illinois. In 1998, George Ryan was elected governor of Illinois on the strength of that lie about the Willis case. An internal memo later established that, just eight days after the Willis tragedy, at least four officials in Ryan's office were aware that "there is a strong possibility that this individual obtained his [commercial driver's license] illegally." Elsewhere at least three other people died in crashes involving truckers improperly licensed by Ryan's staff.

That 1998 campaign for the job Ryan coveted set the pattern: To distance himself from the immolation of the Willis children, Ryan concocted the strategy of deflection, denial and dishonesty that today rests in ruin. The conviction Monday of the disgraced former governor on all counts certifies him as a federal felon.

That verdict of guilt in U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer's wood-paneled courtroom puts Ryan squarely at the cold heart of a corruption scandal with a death toll.

"Ryan is charged with betraying the citizens of Illinois for over a decade on state business, both large and small. By giving friends free rein over state employees and state business to make profits--and by steering those profits to his friends and, at times, his family--defendant Ryan sold his office."

--U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago on Dec. 17, 2003, the date of Ryan's indictment.

In the years since that initial two-page memo was handed to a supervisor in the U.S. attorney's office here, the federal probe known as Operation Safe Road has become a reliable font of ever more noxious revelations about the Illinois culture of political sleaze.

Bad enough that Ryan's minions sold driver's licenses to bribers--some of that blood money wound up in Ryan's campaign coffers. Bad enough that Ryan gave his pals illicit influence over the conduct of state business--according to prosecutors, the cronies themselves pocketed a combined $4.77 million in sweetheart deals. Bad enough they rewarded Ryan with gifts and favors--some of that lucre went to Ryan's family members, spreading a now indelible stain from the discredited governor to his loved ones.

Ryan has claimed all along that he did nothing wrong and that he knew nothing about the crimes of his compatriots. His evident attitude toward his own corrupt acts mirrored the phrase his lawyer frequently used during the trial's closing arguments: "Who cares?"

Twelve jurors cared. Twelve jurors, acting for the 12 million people of Illinois. Twelve jurors devoted to the notion--plainly novel to Ryan--that citizens are entitled to the honest services of the public officials they elect to office.

Much has been made of those jurors' occasionally troubled deliberations. If defense attorneys see grounds for appeal, so be it. That process may drag on for years. In the meantime, the defense lawyers have to sit through Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer's sentencing of George Ryan, convicted felon.

"The only way to protect the public from the ongoing problem of public corruption and to promote respect for the rule of law is to impose strict penalties on all defendants who engage in such conduct."

--U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo of Chicago in his Jan. 25 opinion in a Cicero public corruption case.

Ryan and his crony Lawrence Warner are the 74th and 75th defendants convicted in Operation Safe Road since November 1998. One other defendant's case is pending, another's was dismissed, and two defendants are fugitives. Remarkably, not one person charged in this investigation has been acquitted.

This case caps years of extraordinary work on Safe Road by agents from the U.S. Postal Service, the Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the FBI. It caps extraordinary work, too, by the team of federal prosecutors led by Patrick Collins, one author of that original two-page memo.

Through his actions and inactions, George Ryan essentially destroyed the Republican Party in Illinois. He also destroyed himself.

This was a man acclaimed by many people for his moratorium on capital punishment--congratulated by world leaders such as Nelson Mandela, honored by the lighting of the Colosseum in Rome, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet this also is a man hounded from office because, by the end of one term as governor, the stench of corruption on his watch rendered him untouchable. The people of Illinois, though long inured to their state's culture of political sleaze, saw his re-election as intolerable.

Attention turns to other federal assaults on that culture. In this state's, this city's, corridors of power, one question softly echoes: Who's next?

Twelve conscientious jurors weighed the evidence and declared Ryan a criminal. Corruption is his epitaph.

Who's next?

"I hope very much to be a hero."

--George Ryan, at his 1999 inauguration.

Originally Posted by Faye

What was a Mexican truck doing in the U.S. in 2005?

Mexican trucks have been allowed within 25 miles of the border in the U.S. This has been going on for years unfortunately!