How 2 Fatal Eagle Rock-Related Accidents Occurred on the 134 Freeway—and What CalTrans Should do About Them

It’s been more than seven months since four people died and two girls were hospitalized in an accident on the 134 freeway that resulted in an SUV crashing onto North Figueroa Street just as the last in a series of Eagle Rock’s Concerts in the Park were winding up at Eagle Rock Recreation Center on a Sunday evening.

At the time, California Highway Patrol Public Information Officer Kevin Denmon told Eagle Rock Patch it would take about a month for the CHP’s so-called Multi-Accident Investigation Team to probe the accident and determine its cause.

More than a month later, Denmon had nothing to tell Patch about the investigation, which, he said was still underway. Over the months since then, Eagle Rock resident Mark Snelgrove, who lives on Eagle Vista Drive, not far from the 134 freeway, also got in touch with Denmon, but to no avail.

“He wouldn’t tell me anything,” Snelgrove told Patch this past Tuesday at Eagle Rock City Hall, shortly before he made a presentation about the accident—and another fatal one on the 134 involving a 49-year-old Eagle Rock woman on March 9—to the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council.

See the accompanying video for an account of Snelgrove's presentation to the ERNC board.

The CHP’s preliminary report about the August 2012 accident states that the SUV rolled over the edge of the freeway’s central divider, Snelgrove told the ERNC. In fact, the vehicle rode up the sloping center wall of the freeway, just prior to a K-rail that stands parallel to the wall a few feet away, Snelgrove said.

“Had the preceding K-rail preceded the point of impact of the wall, the resulting accident might not have been nearly as tragic,” Snelgrove said, adding that “this slope, K-rail gap is not only here [in the freeway’s Eagle Rock section] but on the preceding bridge on the eastbound 134.”

Snelgrove, who's determined to get to the bottom of the August 2012 crash, met with Stephanie Romero, a field deputy to the recently elected 51st District Assemblyman Jimmy Gomez, on Wednesday to discuss safety issues related to the accident.

Romero told him she would be meeting with officials from CalTrans District 7 in the next 10 days or so, when she would bring up another issue that Snelgrove brought to her attention: The long-delayed soundwall between the 134 freeway and Eagle Rock residential areas.

Snelgrove told ERNC members he would be back before them with a “letter of encouragement” for the board to sign and support, urging CalTrans District 7 to remedy the design of the freeway where the two Eagle Rock-related accidents occurred and to bring the area “up to current freeway safety standards.”