By Joe Goldeen
The Record
STOCKTON, Calif. — Two Stockton police cruisers responding to the same call crashed in the middle of the Hammer and West lanes intersection shortly after 8 p.m. Sunday, causing the cars to go airborne and sending their two drivers to the hospital as they crashed into four other vehicles.
Both officers had to be pried from their mangled cruisers by Stockton firefighters using the Jaws of Life, according to witnesses. They were transported by ambulance to area hospitals with moderate to serious injuries, Stockton Police Department spokesman Officer Pete Smith said.
Smith did not provide the names or further details about the officers involved. But he said no serious injuries were reported by the civilians whose cars were hit while waiting for a red light in the westbound lanes on Hammer.
One man, Pedro Gape, 70, visiting Stockton from Mlang, North Cotabato in the Philippines, was taken to a hospital by ambulance after complaining of chest pains. He was with his wife, Esther Gape, 71, their nephew, Johnattan Quiroz, 30, of Stockton and Quiroz’s infant daughter, Jianna, when the Honda Odyssey van Quiroz was driving was hit by one of the flying police cars.
Quiroz was in the far left lane of westbound Hammer at a red light waiting to turn left when he saw one police car with lights and siren heading eastbound on Hammer enter the intersection. He subsequently saw another police car heading northbound on West Lane, also with lights and siren going, enter the intersection.
“They hit each other. Both went flying in the air and hit our cars,” Quiroz said at the scene about 45 minutes after the crash. Upon impact, the air bags in his minivan deployed and his windshield cracked.
“You’re shook up. My first impression is to get my baby out,” Quiroz said, noting that he hit his right leg against the dashboard and needed help getting out of the van. He pointed to the Rev. Richard Bishop, 44, pastor of Stockton’s Christian Life Center, who happened to be having coffee nearby when the crash occurred.
“It sounded like a cannon going off,” said Bishop, who was enjoying coffee with his family at Saxby’s on the southeast corner of the major intersection. Bishop immediately ran outside, and he and another man he didn’t know helped pull Quiroz and his family from their van. They then went back with fire extinguishers and put out fires that had started in the police cars.
Prasad Kosuru, 35, his wife Neelima Kosuru, 31, and their daughter Ruchira, 3, all from Folsom, were in the lane next to the Quiroz van when the same police car hit their Nissan van.
“When it hit, it didn’t sink into my mind at first,” Prasad Kosuru said. “Immediately, we got out.”
Glass and vehicle debris were scattered over all lanes of the massive intersection, perhaps the largest in Stockton. At least two dozen police officers and a half dozen fire units responded to the scene, which will be handled as a major accident investigation, said Smith, the police spokesman.
He said the police cars were rolling to assist other officers in a foot pursuit of a felony suspect in a northeast Stockton neighborhood. He had no further details on that case.
The last accident involving a Stockton police vehicle was on June 24, 2007, when Officer Kimberly Sailius, 36, was driving a police cruiser that was T-boned by an American Medical Response ambulance. Sailius, who was seriously hurt in the crash, was at fault, having failed to confirm traffic was clear before passing through a red light, the Stockton Police Department concluded after a two-month investigation.
Also, in August 2007, Officer Robert DuBois, then with the Stockton force for nearly two years, suffered a fractured hand when Saul Morales, 34, allegedly ran through a red light and struck the car carrying DuBois and fellow Officer William Teague. Teague, a three-year veteran in the department, sustained no injuries. That same month, a Stockton motorcycle police officer was injured when a vehicle turned across his path while he chased a reckless driver. Officer Nicky Ezell, 41, was not severely injured, said Stockton police Sgt. Chuck Flesher. In June 2006, Ezell, a 17-year veteran of the police force, suffered minor injuries when he was broadsided by a car while he made a traffic stop.
Copyright 2008 The Record