SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Four people were killed on Saturday when a pickup truck hurtled off San Diego’s Coronado Bridge, plummeting some 60 feet and crashing onto a park where hundreds of people had gathered for a festival.
Authorities said four people in a vendor’s booth died and eight were injured when a pickup truck plunged off the bridge’s on-ramp before landing in Chicano Park, where a motorcycle rally was taking place.
“It’s horrible. It’s horrific,” said Jake Sanchez, a public information officer for the California Highway Patrol. “There were people down below, and we have bodies that were, you know, they are innocent people that are just down here having a good time, and now they’re gone.”
The driver of the truck survived and was later charged with driving under the influence, authorities said. Sanchez said the 24-year-old driver is in the Navy, assigned to the North Island Naval Air Station on Coronado Island.
Stunned witnesses described the horror of seeing the truck crashing onto the festival gathering.
The truck “was going so fast it flew over the stage and landed in front of the stage on a tent,” Chase Dameron told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “It was like a movie. It was like in slow motion,” he added, describing the scene as “instant chaos and panic.”
(Reporting by Marty Graham in San Diego and Chris Michaud in New York; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)