Crime & Safety

Truck Plunges into Flood Control Channel at 7th Street

The driver's vehicle was partly submerged in water but he was rescued near 2006 crash that killed a Belmont Shore junior at Los Alamitos High.

UPDATE: The driver in this crash has died and he has been identified. Updated police press release:

On Thursday, September 8, 2011, at approximately 9:20 am, Long Beach Police Officers responded to a report of a  traffic collision at Studebaker Road and 7th Street. 

When officers arrived, they found that this was a single vehicle collision. The driver, and sole occupant, of a silver Toyota Tacoma lost control of his vehicle as he was traveling west on College Park Drive when he drove across a dirt lot, crossed Studebaker Road and went into the San Gabriel flood channel. The vehicle entered the flood channel upside down and both the vehicle and driver were submerged underwater. The driver was removed from the vehicle by witnesses and Long Beach Fire Department personnel and transported to a local hospital. 

The driver of the vehicle has been identified as Thaddeus Tran, a 64-year-old male resident of Westminster.  

Tran was transported to the hospital in critical condition, but later succumbed to his injuries. Investigators believe he was experiencing a medical emergency at the time of the collision. 

Anyone with information regarding this incident is asked to contact the Long Beach Police Department Accident Investigations Detective David Lauro at (562) 570-7355.

Initial story:

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A motorist who may have experienced a ''medical emergency'' while driving crashed his pickup truck into a flood-control channel at Studebaker Road and Seventh Street, according to the Long Beach Fire Department.

The man's truck went into the flood channel at 9:30 a.m., and he was pulled from the partly submerged vehicle. The Long Beach Fire Department personnel rescued him and transported him to a hospital ``in full (cardiac) arrest,'' said fire department spokesman Matt Dobberpuhl.

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Witnesses said the man was driving the vehicle erratically before the accident, Dobberpuhl said. Police believe he may have experienced a ``medical emergency,'' Long Beach police spokeswoman Nancy Pratt told the Press-Telegram.

The crash Thursday was near the 2006 fatal plunge of Belmont Park's Amanda Carter, 16, who was a junior at Los Alamitos High School. She was killed after she drove an SUV into the flood- control channel at the site of this morning's plunge. At the time of her crash, her Jeep Cherokee flipped over and the tires emerged out of ten feet of water in a rain-filled, fast-moving drainage channel. In the aftermath, the city erected barriers to help deflect vehicles that might barrel off the freeway at the Studebaker exit as they try to make the light.

The identify of Thursday's driver was not immediatelt released, nor his condition. It was not immediately known exactly how close this crash occurred to Amanda Carter's, or whether there were concrete buffers there.

From a Los Angeles Times story by Erika Hayasaki:

A teenage girl was killed Monday when her Jeep skidded off a ramp and plunged upside down into the rain-bloated Los Cerritos flood channel in Long Beach.

Amanda Carter, 16, of Long Beach was pronounced dead at Community Hospital of Long Beach, authorities said.

Witnesses told police that her black Jeep Cherokee was traveling fast down the Garden Grove Freeway about 1:45 p.m. when she turned sharply onto the Studebaker Road exit and lost control, said Sgt. David Cannan, spokesman for the Long Beach Police Department. The vehicle tumbled 25 feet down an embankment, crashed through a chain-link fence and plunged into six feet of water.

The Orange County Register reported her memorial at El Dorado Park.

City News contributed to this report.


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