7 Vehicles Collide in Chain Reaction

Seven vehicles, including a school bus, collided Thursday in a bizarre chain-reaction accident that also involved two young pedestrians and a jogger, though no one was seriously injured, authorities said.

“The possibility for [the accident] having a tragic ending was there,” said Carolyn Burch, principal of Francis Polytechnic High School, which two of the victims attend.

The accident occurred about 8 a.m. at Whitsett Avenue and Roscoe Boulevard in Sun Valley. A small school bus carrying six special education students slowed to stop for a student and was sideswiped by a Department of Water and Power pickup attempting to drive around it, said Officer Jordan Van Meter of the California Highway Patrol.

Another truck, displaying a UCLA seal on its door and carrying a 4-foot-wide tree stump, rear-ended the DWP pickup, causing it to spin around and come to a stop facing the bus.

The UCLA truck rolled through the intersection and hit a Toyota pickup that was waiting to make a left turn from Roscoe to Whitsett. The Toyota spun around and hit a Pontiac Firebird, which careened into an Oldsmobile behind it. The Toyota also hit a 19-year-old woman jogger in the crosswalk.

The UCLA truck rolled on and hit a 16-year-old girl and 12-year-old boy who were standing at a nearby bus bench. The truck dragged the girl a few feet before striking a chain-link fence and smashing the front end of an Econoline van in the parking lot of Polytechnic High.

The truck’s size worked to the girl’s advantage, allowing it to pass over her without crushing her.

“She was very, very lucky,” Van Meter said.

The two young people are students at the school, and the van belongs to a parent who was attending a conference at the campus.

As many as 20 people may have been involved in the accident, including drivers and passengers, authorities said. Their names were withheld pending completion of the preliminary investigation.

Wreckage from the collision was scattered over a quarter-mile stretch of Roscoe, and the intersection was closed for several hours.

Van Meter said it was “miraculous” that there were only moderate injuries.

Firemen extricated two men from the DWP truck with the “jaws of life” device, authorities said.

The children on the bus were on their way to Lowman Special Education Center in North Hollywood. Ranging in age from 4 to 19, they were examined at the scene by paramedics and a doctor from the center.

An aide aboard the bus was taken to a nearby hospital, and the children continued their trip on another bus. Only one parent chose to pick up a daughter from the school and have her checked by his own doctor, said Shel Erlich, spokesman for the Los Angeles Unified School District.