Driver Dies as Auto Falls on Patrol Car; Officer Slightly Hurt

“I can’t believe I survived it,” a rookie Los Angeles police officer said Sunday after she escaped serious injury when a car flew off the Santa Monica Freeway late Saturday night and crashed on top of her parked patrol car.

The driver of the airborne vehicle, James Tudy III, 67, of Compton, the co-owner of Tudy’s, a popular mid-Wilshire restaurant, died shortly before midnight at County-USC Medical Center, police said.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

“I’m just glad to be here,” Annette Renteria, 25, a patrol officer in the LAPD’s Southwest Division, said as she rested in bed at her parents’ Mission Hills home. “. . . The whole thing is incredible.”

Renteria said she had just had another vehicle towed away on Catalina Street near 22nd Street and was about to leave, “when all of a sudden (she) heard this huge crashing sound” above her.

“At first, I didn’t know what it was. Then, a second or two later, it registered that a car had fallen off the freeway and landed on top of me,” she said. “I crawled out of the driver’s window and saw the car on top of my vehicle. I tried to look for the driver, but I couldn’t see anyone.

“I remember telling myself to stay calm and I radioed my location several times. I was stunned. I was so glad when the help arrived.”

Both cars were destroyed in the crash, Police Officer Paul Partridge said. Tudy was ejected and thrown more than 40 feet from his 1967 Mercedes-Benz 250 sedan.

Renteria was treated at Orthopaedic Hospital for a minor back and neck sprain and released.

Traffic investigators said Tudy’s car was traveling east on the freeway when he apparently lost control and the vehicle jumped over the guardrail, hitting a chain-link fence and some trees before coming to rest on top of the black-and-white police car.

One of Tudy’s partners in the West Pico Boulevard soul food restaurant, Karol Hudson, said that she and the restaurateur had attended a business meeting Saturday in West Los Angeles and that Tudy nearly choked while drinking a glass of water.

“He was gasping for air as though the water had gone down the wrong way,” she said. “He decided to drive home after his breathing returned to normal.”

Police said they have no evidence that Tudy was drinking.

“She was very, very lucky,” Partridge said of Renteria. “She could have been killed very easily. I’ve never seen anything like it before, but I’ve only been on the job here 19 years.”

Renteria, who graduated from the Police Academy last October, said her recent training stopped her from panicking. If she had been riding with a partner, she said, they might not have fared as well.

“The passenger side of the roof was completely caved in,” she said. “I’m lucky that I always drive with my window down or else I might have been trapped.”

Renteria said she will probably return to work in a week. However, she said the memory of the crash will last a lot longer.

“The whole thing was scary,” she said. “It’s the last thing you expect to happen. I can’t believe I’m talking about it right now.”

In another fatal auto crash, two teen-age boys died and two others suffered minor injuries after their speeding car plowed into a parked big-rig truck in the Mt. Washington area early Sunday.

Los Angeles police said the car’s driver, who was one of those killed, was apparently trying to pass another vehicle along Marmion Way near Stanley Avenue when the car veered out of control and struck the side of the parked truck about 1:30 a.m.

None of the boys’ names were released.

As of midday Sunday, traffic accidents had claimed the lives of at least 33 people throughout the state--including six in the Los Angeles area--since the July 4 holiday weekend began, authorities said.

The California Highway Patrol said that its officers had arrested 1,413 people statewide, including 440 locally, for driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol.