Gilroy
– They died within days of each other, both run down as they
crossed Gilroy streets: elderly Norm Watenpaugh, the beloved
environmentalist who nurtured owls and bluebirds, and tiny Julio
Gonzalez, the cherub-cheeked 5-year-old who idolized his older
brother. Both were hit by pick-up trucks in one
tragic October week.
Gilroy – They died within days of each other, both run down as they crossed Gilroy streets: elderly Norm Watenpaugh, the beloved environmentalist who nurtured owls and bluebirds, and tiny Julio Gonzalez, the cherub-cheeked 5-year-old who idolized his older brother. Both were hit by pick-up trucks in one tragic October week.
But the parallels end there. Wednesday, district attorneys announced that the driver who hit Watenpaugh will be charged in criminal court, but the driver who hit Gonzalez won’t.
Deputy District Attorney Amir Alem filed vehicular manslaughter charges Wednesday against Stephen Lake, 28, the Gilroy driver who struck and killed Watenpaugh, 76, as he crossed Wren Avenue at dusk. The same day, Deputy District Attorney Frank Carrubba said he’d decided not to file charges against the driver who hit and killed 5-year-old Julio, citing blinding sunlight as the collision’s cause.
“There’s no indications of negligence on the part of the driver” who hit Gonzalez, Carrubba said. Carrubba’s call was reviewed by the supervising district attorney in San Jose, who affirmed his decision. “It appears to be a tragic accident, but it doesn’t rise to the level of a crime.”
Alem said he hadn’t reviewed the Gonzalez case, and “it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to compare” it to the accident that killed Watenpaugh.
Finishing his nightly walk, Watenpaugh was crossing Wren Avenue near El Cerrito Way when Lake’s pickup truck hit him, just after 7pm Sunday, Oct. 15. Lake wasn’t using a cell phone and wasn’t under the influence of drugs or alcohol, “as far as I know,” said Alem. Though the driver “was taking certain medications when this incident occurred,” he added, “there’s no indication whether that affected the accident.” Alem was unsure whether Lake was speeding at the time of the accident.
Nonetheless, he said, “we believe he was driving with negligence – not gross negligence, but negligence.” Alem declined to elaborate on Lake’s negligent behavior.
Two days after Watenpaugh’s death, Julio was killed as he crossed Welburn Avenue, walking to Rod Kelley Elementary School with his older brother Marcos. The driver, described by witnesses as a mother with a baby in tow, stopped at the intersection of Kern and Welburn avenues just after 8am Tuesday, Oct. 17, then turned east, hitting the boy, who wasn’t in a crosswalk. Investigators found that “the defendant was driving at a reasonable rate of speed, came to a complete stop before proceeding through the intersection, was not using her cell phone while driving, and was not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol,” said Carrubba.
Drivers familiar with the intersection speculated that the early-morning glare was to blame. The next day, when Gilroy Police Detective Mitch Madruga got behind the wheel and retraced the driver’s 8am route, said Carrubba, “he found it very difficult, as soon as he made that turn, to see anything in the roadway.”
Police concluded that the sunlight blinded the driver, preventing her from seeing Gonzalez as he crossed the street. No crosswalk spans the eastern side of Kern Avenue, where the boys were crossing.
“Some of the parents that drive around the school said, ‘That could have been me,'” remarked city planning commissioner Joan Spencer in a recent interview. “You just can’t see well.”
City traffic engineer Don Dey said no new safeguards were planned for the intersection of Kern and Welburn avenues. Engineers consider glare when designing and studying intersections, he said, “but there’s really nothing extraordinary that we can do.”
The DA’s decisions come on the heels of the near-conclusion of another hotly contested case: the death of 5-year-old Brayan Trejo, run over last June in a 10th Street crosswalk. Driver Robertina Franco pleaded “no-contest” three weeks ago to charges of vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, the same charge filed against Lake. She is currently awaiting sentencing.
Asked how Trejo’s case differed from Gonzalez’, Carrubba listed several factors. Franco failed to yield to someone in a legal crosswalk; when the other driver hit Gonzalez, he wasn’t in a crosswalk. Witnesses said Franco was “looking at, or in some way using” her cell phone, though she didn’t make or receive calls, and was holding a long receipt in her hand when the accident happened. And there were no external factors, like glaring sunlight, to impair Franco’s vision, Carrubba said.
The decisions end months of foot-tapping by residents, frustrated by the flurry of pedestrian deaths and the slow pace of city fixes for speeding traffic. City engineers are still designing a new $300,000 signal for the intersection of 10th and Church streets, where Trejo died last June; in January, city and school officials ran short on time and cash to apply for a federal Safe Routes to School grant, they said. Dispatch columnists and letters to the editor have called for slower driving, beefed-up traffic enforcement and new safety measures to protect kids en route to school.
Recently, Spencer turned to private businesses to support public safety, hitting up area companies for donations for Challenge 2007, a new fund for pedestrian safety projects.
“We’ve got to do something,” Spencer said in an interview last week. “If the public – as in our city and our schools – haven’t been able to do something, then on the private side we need to help out.”
Meanwhile, the Trejo family has filed a civil claim against the city of Gilroy, holding the city responsible for the boy’s death. If the city had installed a left-turn signal at 10th and Church streets, attorney Paul Caputo alleges, “[the city] could have prevented this.”
As attorneys and juries try to sort out the blame for traffic deaths, police exhort drivers: Be cautious. But sometimes, caution isn’t enough.
“The driver [who hit Gonzalez] didn’t seem to be reckless,” said Gilroy Police Sgt. Kurt Svardal. “You never know when you can be involved in a tragedy like this,”
