Aug 29, 2007 2:03 pm US/Pacific
Trucker Charged In Deaths Of 3 O.C. Siblings
SANTA ANA, Calif. (CBS) ―
An Apple Valley trucker was charged Wednesday with three misdemeanor counts of vehicular manslaughter for allegedly ramming into a minivan on a Mission Viejo freeway and killing three children.
The California Highway Patrol determined that Jorge Romero, 37, was responsible for the May 4 crash on the San Diego (5) Freeway near Oso Parkway that killed 5-year-old Kyle Coble and his sisters, Emma, 4, and Katie, 2, according to the CHP.
If he is convicted, Romero faces up to three years in jail, Farrah Emami of the Orange County District Attorney's Office said. He is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 13.
Romero is accused of negligently crashing his truck into the back of the minivan, which plowed through the back seat where the Coble children were sitting. Lori Coble, the children's mother who was driving, and the children's grandmother, Cynthia Gene Maestri, 60, of Coto de Caza, were injured.
The family was returning home from a day at Irvine Spectrum, where they had gone to ride the Ferris wheel for Kyle's birthday, which was one day earlier. The family was headed south on the 5 Freeway and came to a stop behind traffic in the exit lane at Oso Parkway.
Romero allegedly came up behind the van at a speed of about 60-70 mph in a tractor-trailer carrying electronics weighing in excess of 40,000 pounds.
According to prosecutors, Romero was inattentive and hit his brakes too late. He is accused of driving at an unsafe speed for the traffic conditions and not maintaining an appropriate distance
from the stopped traffic ahead of him.
Emami said misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter charges may be filed when there is "ordinary negligence" or the failure to use reasonable care to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm to one's self or another. A person is negligent if he or she does or fails to do something that a reasonable, careful person would not do in the same situation, she said.
Felony vehicle manslaughter may be charged if there is "gross negligence," which involves more than ordinary carelessness, inattention or mistake in judgment. That person's actions must be so different from how an ordinary careful person would act in the same situation that his or her act
amounts to disregard for human life or indifference to the consequences of the act, Emami said.
Romero is on suspension from KW Express, a Carson-based freight-hauling company, a spokesman for the company said earlier.
Romero could not be reached, and it was not immediately clear who will represent him.
Drug and alcohol use was not a factor, and Romero was not hurt, officers said earlier.
According to published reports, Romero was cited in 2002 and 2006 for speeding in a tractor-trailer and ticketed for driving without his lights on 2005 and driving with a suspended license in 1997.
Bill Furlow, a KW International spokesman, said Romero did not work for the company when he was ticketed. He also was free to work for other companies when not working for KW, Furlow said, but was considered an employee as opposed to a contract driver.
The company, Furlow said, "has no quarrel" with a U.S. Department of Transportation report that found more than a dozen safety violations at the company after the accident.
Violations included allowing five drivers to work before the results of drug-testing were returned; that driver travel time and location records were falsified and that inspection and vehicle-maintenance records were not kept.
"The company doesn't quarrel with any of this, they just corrected them," Furlow said.
The children's deaths galvanized residents of close-knit Ladera Ranch and touched many others who followed the news reports, leading to an outpouring of sympathy for a couple who had doted on their three young children and were left grief-stricken.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
