Sudden Losses : Traffic Accidents That Claimed 75 Lives Last Year Leave Families and Friends Struggling to Cope

They kill dozens of Ventura County residents every year suddenly, violently, without warning, discretion or mercy.

The victims come from every age group and walk of life--far more than all the deaths from bar fights, carjackings, random drive-by shootings and murders combined.

Last year vehicle accidents killed 75 people in Ventura County--and shattered the lives of hundreds of family members and friends left behind.

The death toll was typical for the county. Over the previous five years, the average number of dead from traffic accidents was 70. In 1987, it climbed as high as 89.

So far this year, another four have died.

Until recently, these brutal deaths have almost been seen as common, unavoidable events by those whose lives were left untouched.

But a recent rash of 11 deaths in five weeks along California 126 has shattered that complacency.

Worried state, county and city officials have scrambled to form task forces and map battle plans. They have already lowered speed limits, beefed up police patrols, doubled fines in the California 126 construction zone, and commissioned billboards to warn of the danger.

“The deaths, the collisions and accidents along Highway 126 must come to an end,” state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-Los Olivos) declared at a news conference earlier this month.

But such vows contrast with a sense of fatalism voiced by others more familiar with the road.

Construction and unrelenting traffic on California 126 have made fatal accidents almost inevitable on the tight, dangerous two-lane road, California Highway Patrol Capt. Mike Porrazzo said.

“Unfortunately, with the traffic we have on 126, it’s going to happen again,” he said recently.

And California 126 isn’t even Ventura County’s deadliest road.

In fact, the much more heavily traveled Ventura Freeway claimed 10 lives in 1996, contrasted with eight who died on California 126, a Times study of highway fatalities shows. The county’s third-worst stretch of roadway was the Ronald Reagan Freeway through Simi Valley, where seven died last year.

And freeways were not even the deadliest type of road. Drivers reach the highest speeds there, but more people lost their lives on surface streets in Ventura County during 1996: 44 deaths, compared with 31 on the county’s freeway systems.

No Ventura County city escaped the carnage.

Overall, more died in wrecks on Oxnard-area roads and freeways than in any other city: 17. Roads in the Camarillo and Ventura areas posted 11 traffic deaths each.

Roads in and around Simi Valley had nine deaths. Thousand Oaks and Fillmore had six. Santa Paula had five, Moorpark four, Ojai three and Port Hueneme one.

And despite the current focus on California 126, authorities say it ultimately comes down to Ventura County drivers themselves.

Police, emergency workers, coroners and those grieving the dead agree that if drivers realized how much they stand to lose, they would do the right thing. And if more people were to stop drinking, pay attention, wear seat belts and slow down, fewer children, parents, spouses and friends would die.

“I hate to coin an old phrase, but speed does, in fact, kill. And it kills plenty,” said Officer Don Mulville, Oxnard police traffic coordinator. “You’ve got to have patience when you’re out there driving.”

One Young Victim

Eight months later, Lisa Luna barely begins to recount her youngest son’s last day before she crumbles in tears.

David, 10, had spent all that March day in Ojai at home. So she let him go off to a friend’s house to play, just a few blocks away.

Then came a phone call. David had ridden his bike down a blind driveway to the street, where a truck smashed him to the pavement.

Luna rushed to his side. “He was still in the street. I went up and tried to get the blood out of his mouth so he could breathe. . . . He didn’t look that bad. He still had his helmet on.”

The truck’s driver stood by. A woman came up and spoke, Luna recalled. “She goes, ‘He didn’t mean to do it, he didn’t mean to do it.’ And I go, like, ‘I don’t care. I’m just worried about my son.’ ”

Luna rode the ambulance to Ojai Valley Hospital, where David began to wake up and thrash around. She helped hold him so doctors could get an air tube down his throat and an IV needle into his veins.

As his vital signs stabilized, she had him moved to Ventura County Medical Center in case he needed more advanced treatment.

She paged David’s father--her ex-husband. Glenn Utter and wife Wenona rushed to David’s bedside.

Doctors CAT-scanned the boy’s head. They examined his injuries, checked his vital signs, assured his parents he would be fine.

An hour later, doctors were still waiting for a brain surgeon to arrive and pump fluid from his skull to relieve pressure on his brain. And David Utter, a bright, cheerful Little Leaguer who had lost too much blood, died.

Friends, relatives, and Glenn and Wenona Utter’s colleagues from the Ventura Police Department gathered around the family in the days that followed, helping them make funeral arrangements through a daze.

The funeral launched the family on an emotional roller coaster that they ride to this day.

Glenn Utter, a former California Highway Patrol officer, had felt grief many times before while interviewing crash survivors and next of kin. “But it’s not something you have to continue to live with,” he says. “What’s frustrating about this is it’s so permanent.”

Overwhelming, pointless guilt struck him for a time, until he realized he could have done nothing because it was actually David’s fault.

Greg, David’s 12-year-old brother, remains grim and stoic, bottling his feelings inside but for bursts of anger. He discusses David with no one but his dad.

David’s mother says she went straight back to work afterward, to ward off depression. But when his birthday and Christmas loomed, she went out on disability and sought counseling.

“I was having horrible thoughts,” she says. “It’s really hard for me to go to the cemetery. I want to dig him up. I don’t care if it’s bones, or whatever, I want to dig him up and hold him. . . . We did everything together, we were so close.”

Wenona Utter begins to cry when she tells a visitor about David’s crushed bicycle: “We kept it. It’s too hard to throw it out.”

Traffic Death Odds

Like 10 other 1996 Ventura County traffic victims, David Utter was not in a car when he died. One in seven of all the county’s road casualties died while riding a bike, a skateboard or walking.

But the steel cage of a car around you is no proof against death. At the current rate, Ventura County residents have about a one in 1,000 chance of dying in a car wreck in the next decade.

“It only takes a 20 mph instant change in velocity to rupture an aorta,” says Mulville of the Oxnard police. “And if that’s the case, you die. You bleed to death in a very short time.”

County Coroner Ronald O’Halloran ticks off the fatal injuries he commonly sees: “Skull fractures, neck fractures, rib fractures with internal damage to all of the vital organs, the kidney, the spleen, the liver, the heart, the lungs, the brain. It all depends on how the impact occurred.”

The line between life and death is blurry:

“Some injuries are borderline,” O’Halloran says. “You might survive if you get immediate medical care. But if you can’t . . . it can kill you, or you can linger in the hospital for a long time and die of infection.”

Six 1996 accident victims lay in comas for days. Some held on for weeks before they died. Another young man died last January because a car hit him in 1993.

But last March, Daniel “Scott” Howell died quickly.

The popular 16-year-old Moorpark High School student was one of two boys killed within two months on the same twisting stretch of Balcom Canyon Road near Moorpark.

The truck he was riding in slammed into a telephone pole, and he hit the inside of the truck, suffering head and chest injuries that were fatal.

“He went quick, and he went peacefully,” says his father, Dan Howell, gentle resignation in his voice.

Howell, a movie studio truck driver, badly misses the bright, charismatic boy, the Little League games they umpired together, the long talks about everything from the film industry to the Internet.

“It just takes a big hole and puts it right in the middle of your heart,” Howell says. “That never goes away.”

Word of Scott’s death so shocked his father that at first Howell did not believe it when he called his 14-year-old daughter at home and heard the news.

He remembers getting upset with her. “Then I got on the phone with the coroner [investigator] who was there, and I was starting to yell at him.”

Coroner’s investigators dread notifying family members, investigator Craig Stevens says.

“Imagine yourself being the bearer of that kind of news at 2 o’clock in the morning and knocking on the door, when the family’s anticipating it’s going to be their loved one and it isn’t,” Stevens says. “It’s the absolute worst part of the job.”

Some faint. Others explode in rage.

“We’ve had people on the extreme end attempt to attack you, to run back in the house to get a gun, and they’ve had to be tackled inside the house,” Stevens says.

“You end up having to learn how to read people real fast, to try to second-guess what they’re about to do.”

And investigators try to bring a neighbor, friend or minister in to stay with the bereaved, “because 20 minutes after you’ve left, they don’t remember 90% of what they want you to tell them,” Stevens says.

Scott Howell’s mother, Suzie, was at work when her boss got the call.

“I knew the coroner’s office was on the phone,” she says. “And I knew instantly what happened.” A friend had to drive her home.

The next few days, the following weeks, were a haze, “almost an out-of-body experience,” Suzie Howell says.

Scott’s funeral was beautiful, heavily attended by his friends. Bandmates played “Amazing Grace,” and one close friend offered the band’s highest honor, kneeling to salute the coffin with a gleaming sword.

Afterward, the house felt empty, without the boisterous, good-humored boy.

Suzie Howell slept on the living room couch, as she once did while waiting up nights for him to come home.

And despite support from his friends, despite all the great Scott stories they told her and the laughs they shared, she mourned deeply.

Until just two weeks ago, when she had a dream.

“I had a dream that he’s an angel in heaven,” she recalls. “He looked just like his old self. He had his favorite gray shorts and a white T-shirt, but the look on his face was something I’ve never seen before. . . . And he said, ‘I’m OK, Mom. You have to rest now.’ ”

She misses him terribly and she still grieves. But Suzie Howell says she has made her peace.

Long-Term Grieving

When a fatal illness strikes, most relatives actually begin grieving while the person is still alive. But the sudden death during a car wreck hits hard and cuts deep, leaving grief that can last for years.

“The first year or two, they’re actually in a daze and they don’t function well,” says Susie Salguero, a counselor who runs bereavement-support groups for Help of Ojai.

“They’re not really able to perform well at work. Some lose their jobs. They are in an altered state of mind.”

Studies show that hard grief also skews biochemistry, weakening the immune system, Salguero says, adding that widows or widowers have a higher-than-average chance of dying within two years of losing a spouse.

The first few days are crucial. Friends and supporters--the Casserole Brigade, as Salguero calls them--offer vital comfort and support.

“When you’re first stunned by this blow, you don’t have enough sense to eat,” she says. “You are not a safe driver at the wheel, and you’re not motivated to do anything. People do need to take care of you.”

The funeral passes. Weeks go by. Friends drift back to their lives. “And you can’t get back to your life, because your life has been shattered,” Salguero says. This is when you must seek out a support group, which can be an informal handful of friends who have suffered a similar loss, she says.

“You need people who will say, ‘See, you can heal. Life will get good again. Life will never be the same, but you will have a life.’ ”

Denying the loss, bottling up the pain, losing oneself in work, drugs, booze, sex, shopping--all can prolong the grief and delay returning to a healthy life. And before that return can happen, Salguero says, everyone must finish grieving.

“Grief is adjusting from your world the way it was before, to your world the way it is now,” she says. “It is really a healing process, reorienting who you are and what you’re going to do with your life because this primary character is no longer in it.”

Endless Nights

Aileen Valle is doing her best to keep it together.

An Oxnard firetruck rushing to a call smashed into a van driven by her husband, George, in May.

Now she alone must raise her daughter, Erica, a once-cheerful girl turned withdrawn, moody and afraid she will lose her mother too.

Valle last remembers her husband cutting three bunches of flowers from their Oxnard garden--one for her, one for his mother and one in memory of his co-workers slain in a gunman’s rampage at the Oxnard unemployment office in 1993.

She misses George Valle’s humor, his jokes, the warm charisma that drew friends to the beloved social worker like a magnet.

“The nights are endless. It’s really when it bothers me the most,” Valle says, fighting tears. “Holidays are--oh God, his birthday’s coming up in February. I’m dreading it.”

She has grown to hate the word, “widow.”

And she is considering going back to the bereavement group she visited early on, to find something to hold onto, some hope that she can get through this.

“Everything changes in one second,” Aileen Valle says slowly. “Everything changes. I feel like I lost half of myself.”

Valle’s mother, brothers and sisters also feel the loss. “It’s a big void,” says her brother, Gabriel Valle.

George Valle’s death cost not only the family, but also society. The Oxnard Boys Club relied on his volunteerism, and his unemployment office clients on his expertise, Gabriel Valle says. “That’s one less person that’s concerned out there.”

He wonders if most drivers even consider the risks they take. “We take it for granted so much, the automobile, not realizing that every time we get into it, it’s really a license to be able to take somebody else’s life.”

Avoiding the Carnage

Ventura County has grown substantially in the past 10 years.

But the traffic fatality toll has not--partially because cars are better designed and more people are aware of the dangers of drunk driving, says O’Halloran, the county coroner.

“Drive defensively, that’s the best,” he advises.

Investigator Stevens says much of the recent carnage on California 126 could have been avoided if drunk drivers stayed sober, if tired drivers got off the road to rest, if everybody wore seat belts and slowed down.

Sisters Abby and Alex Dees say they are still awaiting the police report that will explain why their father died in a crash last month on California 126.

Toxicology reports arrived Thursday, showing Moorpark attorney Mark Dees had no alcohol in his system, daughter Abby says.

But they are left to wonder why his Pontiac Fiero crossed the center line and ran head-on into a Ford Explorer, killing himself and another man.

His estate was a shambles, they say. They must wade through their father’s chaotic records while still grappling with his death.

“I think the lesson for me in this was to really appreciate each day, because you just don’t know when it’s all going to turn over,” Alex Dees says. “The other lesson in this is to prepare yourself so the people that come after you don’t have to deal with it.”

They cope together through spiritual faith and the kind of black humor their father would have appreciated:

Sorting through spare parts for the antique cars that Mark Dees loved to collect, his daughters keep turning up give-away baseball hats he wore while tinkering.

His ashes sit in an urn in the office, Abby Dees says. “And every couple of days, the hat changes on the urn.”

But she knows they are not done grieving: “I was talking to Dad’s sister, and we’re all in great spirits. None of us are flinging ourselves on the ground and screaming,” she says.

“But I know when all the dust has settled, I’m going to be walking along the beach, and I’m just going to suddenly lose it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

A Year of Death on the Roads

These are the 75 people who were killed in 1996 as a result of traffic accidents on Ventura County’s freeways, roads and city streets. Unless otherwise noted, the victims named died during or soon after their accidents, while unnamed victims survived.

* Jan. 7: Diane B. Humphreys, 39, of Thousand Oaks, driving alone on Hodencamp Road in Thousand Oaks, makes a sudden left turn, causing her Jeep to roll over and eject her.

* Jan. 8: Roslyn Hogsett, 24, of Oxnard drifts onto the California 118 median near Simi Valley and rolls her Ford Explorer after swerving in an attempt to get back on pavement.

* Jan. 27: Michael Gialloreto, 19, of Oxnard, left in a coma the night of July 9, 1993, after a truck hit him at 70 mph as he pedaled his bike home from work along Harbor Boulevard in Ventura, succumbs to pneumonia.

* Jan. 29: Manuel Contreras Chavez, 36, is riding with a suspected drunk driver whose car slams into a tree on Madera Road in Simi Valley.

* Feb. 12: Guillermina Orozco Sanchez, 32, of Moorpark drifts over the center line on a curve along Lewis Road near Camarillo and crashes head-on into another car.

* Feb. 26: Felicia Figueroa, 20, of Oxnard drifts from the northbound lanes of PCH near Oxnard onto the median. Her car rolls over into the southbound lanes and she is ejected in the crash.

* Feb. 27: Edward Cannon, 70, of Ventura, driving along Los Angeles Avenue in Moorpark, is hit head-on by a wrong-way driver whose car pushes him into the path of a tractor-trailer rig.

* March 3: Edward J. Swainson, 36, of Simi Valley, described by police as possibly under the influence of alcohol, drives off the right edge of northbound California 23 in Moorpark, over-corrects his error and skids into a pepper tree.

* March 4: Daniel “Scott” Howell, 16, of Moorpark is riding in a Toyota truck with a friend who--suddenly distracted by a dog in the cab of the truck--drives off of Balcom Canyon Road near Moorpark and hits a telephone pole.

* March 4: Ivonne Jimenez, 30, of Goleta is traveling north on the Ventura Freeway near Seacliff when a wheel falls off a southbound trailer and hits her car. As she slows and puts on her emergency flashers, another car rear-ends hers.

* March 9: Bernardo Hernandez, 19, of Moorpark swerves off East 5th Street near Del Norte in Oxnard. His car hits an electric pole, flips over, lands on its roof and bursts into flames, but a passenger escapes.

* March 15: Vernon Nelson, 85, of Fillmore drives out of his driveway and onto northbound California 23 into the path of another car.

* March 21: Jeffery Wehrheim, 23, of Ventura rides his motorcycle from Rose Avenue onto the northbound Ventura Freeway near Oxnard. He swerves to avoid rapidly slowing traffic, loses control of the cycle and pitches onto the road where a truck runs him over.

* March 27: Diane Gonzales, 28, of Baldwin Park rides west before dawn on the Ronald Reagan Freeway in Simi Valley in a car driven by Loraine Perelez, 22, also of Baldwin Park. Their car collides head-on with a car being driven the wrong way by Diane Aloia, 40, of Simi Valley. All three are killed.

* March 27: Yvonne Stenner, 20, of Thousand Oaks driving north on California 23 in Thousand Oaks, swerves her pickup truck to avoid a load of aluminum cans that fly out of another pickup’s bed. Her truck flips several times on the median.

* March 31: Alfonso Arellano Hernandez, 32, of Oxnard, believed by police to be drunk, drifts over the center line from the northbound PCH near Mugu Rock. His car slams into another suspected drunk driver’s car.

* April 5: William Peter D’Amico, 31, of Venice loses control of his car on Westlake Boulevard near Potrero Road in Thousand Oaks and crashes into a large oak.

* April 5: Rebecca York, 21, of Ojai is driving south on California 33 near Casitas Vista Road in the Ojai Valley when her compact car slams into a horse, killing it. The car skids off the road and down an embankment. She is not found for five hours, and dies seven days later.

* April 17: Bernice Butler, 79, of Ventura is driving north on Hemlock Street across Main Street when another car hits hers broadside.

* April 29: Tinh Dam, 18, is riding north on the Ventura Freeway in Camarillo when the driver loses control and the car overturns and lands in the southbound lanes, hitting another car. Dam dies May 10.

* May 2: Daniel Garcia Gomez, 29, of Oxnard, suspected of driving while drunk, travels south on Rice Road near Celsius Avenue in Oxnard. Another suspected drunk driver going the wrong way hits Gomez head-on.

* May 3: Dustin Muschitz, 17, of Santa Paula loses control of his vintage Volkswagen when he fails to make a curve on southbound Balcom Canyon Road near Moorpark. The car overturns, and he is ejected through its window.

* May 8: George John Valle, 48, of Oxnard turns left from Colonia Road onto Oxnard Boulevard, where a fire engine with lights flashing and siren blaring broadsides his van.

* May 19: Edna Wehan, 76, of Ventura rides her bicycle out of a blind alleyway in Ventura and across Telegraph Road, where she is hit by a car traveling under the speed limit.

* May 24: William Taylor, 42, of Port Hueneme is trying to pass slower cars in the oncoming lane of Pleasant Valley Road near Oxnard. He sees oncoming traffic, brakes suddenly and loses control of his compact car, which spins off the road and slams into a power pole.

* May 26: David Utter, 10, of Ojai rides his bike down a steep, blind driveway and into traffic on Loma Drive, where a truck crashes into him.

* May 28: Thomas Burke, 25, of Westlake enters the northbound Westlake Boulevard onramp to the Ventura Freeway and loses control of his truck, which slides off the road and overturns.

* June 11: Sergio Novarro Rosas, 27, of Santa Paula is riding east on Rose Avenue near Central Avenue in Oxnard in a car driven by Rafael Aviles, 23, of Moorpark. Aviles loses control of the car, which spins off the road and hits a large tree stump, killing both men.

* June 15: Felicia Mascote, 7, of Saticoy is one of six passengers riding in a Mazda 626. At about 60 mph, the car veers onto the shoulder of Vineyard Road near Saticoy, hits a fence and overturns in a drainage ditch.

* June 20: Faye James, 90, of Fillmore pulls out of her driveway onto California 126. An eastbound truck hits her car’s right side and knocks it into the westbound lanes, where another car hits its left side.

* July 8: Pedro Antonio Hernandez, 44, of Oxnard steps off a bushy median on Saviers Road in Oxnard into the path of an oncoming car.

* July 11: Joanne Welter, 67, of Thousand Oaks is riding home from a shopping trip in Oxnard with her husband. He turns left onto the southbound Rice Road onramp of the Ventura Freeway, where their car is broadsided by a sport-utility truck.

* July 13: Lucia Renteria, 13, of Oxnard is riding along Victoria Avenue in the family van with her brother at the wheel when the van runs off the right shoulder and rolls over.

* July 14: Karl Liporada, 19, of Oxnard is sitting in a car stopped at Victoria and Doris avenues in Oxnard when another car rear-ends his.

* July 26: Daniel Salas, 34, of Oxnard runs off the road for unknown reasons on the Ventura Freeway near California 126. His car hits dense vegetation and a milepost. Based on eyewitness reports, he may have had a heart attack, but the coroner rules he died from a lacerated liver and internal bleeding.

* July 31: Barbara Levens, 63, of Thousand Oaks parks her car in her garage and walks toward the mailbox, having left the car in neutral with the parking brake off. The car rolls out and crushes her.

* Aug. 1: Ronald Carmona, 29, of Oxnard falls asleep at the wheel on Telephone Road in Ventura, drifts onto the median and hits a eucalyptus tree.

* Aug. 25: Russell Ernest Dunning, 44, is riding south on the Ventura Freeway near the Conejo Grade when his son falls asleep at the wheel. Their van runs off the road and strikes a guardrail.

* Sept. 6: Guadalupe Orozco, 35, of Fillmore fails to navigate a curve on Guiberson Road in Fillmore. His car runs off the road and overturns.

* Sept. 7: Jesus Sanchez, 4 months old, of Oxnard is riding on his mother’s lap in a car driven by a suspected drunk driver when it hits another car on Saviers Road near Channel Islands Boulevard in Oxnard.

* Sept. 14: Devinn E. Taylor, 26, of Long Beach; Eneck Vaillant, 29, of Inglewood and Carlos Medrano, 18, of Oxnard are riding in the back seat of a compact car that slams into a light pole at high speed, splitting it in half, killing all three.

* Sept. 16: Brian Cordera, 42, of Simi Valley is driving his wife on his motorcycle along Los Angeles Avenue in Simi Valley when they are struck at the intersection of Erringer Road by a sport-utility truck. Cordera dies eight days later.

* Sept. 19: Jose Antonin Hernandez Tovar, 33, of Thousand Oaks, speeding east on East 5th Street near Las Posas Road in Camarillo. He loses control of his car, which spins off the road and lands in a ditch.

* Oct. 1: Luther T. Allen, 55, of Oxnard is sitting at the junction of Channel Islands Boulevard and Ventura Road in Oxnard when another car rear-ends his. He refuses medical treatment. Suspected of driving while intoxicated, Allen is booked into an Oxnard police holding cell, where he dies a few hours later of his injuries.

* Oct. 8: Javier Castellon, 25, of Oxnard parks on Camino Del Sol in Oxnard, steps out and runs across the street. He steps from the brushy center divider into oncoming traffic, and is killed by a hit-and-run driver.

* Oct. 10: Evelyn Nichols, 76, of Ventura drives through a red light on Johnson Drive in Ventura and is broadsided in the intersection of Telephone Road by another car.

* Oct. 18: Jian Jun Wu, 26, of Woodland Hills, speeding, crosses the double yellow lines on California 126 near Piru and crashes head-on into an oncoming pickup truck.

* Oct. 24: Verda Woodard, 74, of Ventura is riding with her husband along Telegraph Road near Hill Road in Ventura when their car is struck broadside. She dies of her injuries on Nov. 22.

* Oct. 29: David Furtaw, 19, of Thousand Oaks, driving his motorcycle near or slightly over the speed limit on Westlake Boulevard in Thousand Oaks, hits the median curb and flips several times onto the pavement.

* Oct. 31: Betty Thrush, 75, of Oak View makes an illegal left turn onto California 33 at Larmier Avenue in Oak View and is struck by a northbound truck. She never regains consciousness and dies Dec. 13.

* Nov. 1: Brandon Gentry, 12, of Camarillo skateboards into the intersection of Las Posas Road and Camino La Madera in Camarillo and is hit by a car. He dies Nov. 8.

* Nov. 4: Jose Perez, 75, of Santa Paula is walking across Main Street near 4th Street in Santa Paula with his wife when the two are hit by a car. She survives.

* Nov. 9: Darrin Deveau, 26, of Thousand Oaks drives south in the northbound lanes of the Ventura Freeway in Thousand Oaks and slams head-on into another car.

* Nov. 12: Manuel Sandoval, 46, of Oxnard is riding north on Rice Road south of Wooley Road in Oxnard inside an open-cab spray truck when a car comes up behind him. The car brakes to avoid him, spins out and rear-ends the truck.

* Nov. 13: Christopher Campbell, 17, of Simi Valley rides at night, with his motorcycle headlights off, into the intersection of Los Angeles Avenue and Alscot Avenue in Simi Valley and crashes into a four-wheel-drive truck.

* Nov. 17: Craig Riggs, 26, of Santa Paula is riding with a friend at the wheel onto the grass at Obregon Park in Santa Paula, where they intend to skid around on the wet turf. The truck flips, partly ejecting Riggs onto the grass and pinning him under the truck. The friend is arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter and drunk driving.

* Nov. 21: Arthur Hueg, 72, of Camarillo, driving in the rain with bald tires along California 126 in Fillmore, loses control of his van, which runs off the road and overturns.

* Nov. 22: Patricia Higbie, 40, of Goleta is driving her two young children north on the Ventura Freeway in Camarillo when a suspected drunk driver in a stolen car slams into them. Both cars run off the road and hit eucalyptus trees. The other driver, William Jarrett, 43, of Santa Barbara runs from the scene across the northbound lanes where he is hit and killed by a pickup truck.

* Nov. 22: Daniel Ellwell, 58, loses control of his car while driving west on California 118 near Simi Valley in the rain. The car crosses the median and collides with a large pickup truck. He dies Dec. 6.

* Dec. 11: Manuel Estrada, 60, a transient, walks across K Street near 5th Street in Oxnard and is struck by a car.

* Dec. 17: Allan Wilson, 50, of Fillmore tries to run across California 126 near A Street in Fillmore when he is hit by a slow-moving tractor-trailer truck.

* Dec. 21: Charles Andrew Tuttle, 23, stationed at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme, is riding his motorcycle in a parking lot between two barracks--apparently while intoxicated--when the vehicle hits a light pole. He dies Dec. 22.

* Dec. 23: Phillip Bertelson, 58, of Santa Barbara is riding in his family’s sport-utility truck along California 126 near Piru. A westbound sports car, driven by Mark Dees, 63, of Moorpark, crashes into a curb on the shoulder, crosses into the eastbound lanes and hits the truck head-on. Both men die, though Bertelson later is ruled to have suffered a fatal heart attack due to the wreck.

* Dec. 23: Marcos Zizumbo Rico, 60, of Santa Paula, driving east on Telegraph Road near Ventura, swerves to avoid a braking vehicle ahead of him, runs off the road and lands in a barranca.

* Dec. 26: Andrea Tello, 8, and Katie Tello, 11, sisters from Ventura, are riding in their family’s car on California 126 near Santa Paula when an oncoming car swerves into their lane and hits them head-on.

* Dec. 27: Marigold Allen, 16, of Oxnard is driving east on East 5th Street near Las Posas Road in Camarillo when another driver ignores a red light and slams into her car.

* Dec. 30: Alberto Gutierrez, 36, is racing another car at over 90 mph on westbound California 118 near Moorpark when he swerves onto the median to avoid rear-ending a big rig. The car overturns, ejecting him and showering three other cars with debris.

Source: Ventura County medical examiner’s office, police agencies of Ventura County