Van driver who struck 5 children in Northern California crosswalk won’t be charged, DA says

El Dorado County prosecutors on Friday announced they would not be filing criminal charges against the driver of a van that struck five preschool students walking in a crosswalk last year in Pollock Pines.

An extensive investigation, which included information gathered by the California Highway Patrol and a reconstruction of the traffic collision conducted by a hired crash expert, determined the driver was traveling 2 mph above the speed limit of 35 mph when he looked down at a GPS device moments before spotting the children and hitting the brakes.

Prosecutors said the facts of the investigation would not satisfy the legal requirements needed to file a charge of reckless driving causing injury, according to a news release from the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office.

“The facts from this investigation show a driver who was distracted and unaware that there was a large group of pedestrians in a crosswalk directly in front of his vehicle until braking at the last moment,” prosecutors wrote in the news release.

“However inexplicable and negligent the conduct is, there are insufficient facts to show that he was subjectively aware that his driving presented a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm to others, and that he then willfully and intentionally ignored that risk.”

The van’s driver was a 21-year-old man at the time working for a Placerville appliance business and driving a company vehicle, a 2009 Ford E-150 cargo van, to a job location in Pollock Pines. The Sacramento Bee is not naming the driver because he is not being charged.

The crash seriously injured three of the five children who were hit, including one “who suffered head trauma requiring an extensive hospital stay,” prosecutors wrote in the news release. That child, 4 years old at the time, was released from the hospital in August, family said at the time.

“If a victim is injured but not killed in a crash — even injuries involving great bodily injury or permanent loss of function — the driver cannot be criminally charged without proof of reckless driving, which also requires ‘willful or wanton disregard for safety,’” prosecutors wrote, citing California’s vehicle code.

Preschoolers were headed to nearby park

The vehicle crash with the pedestrians occurred about 10:40 a.m. May 31 on Pony Express Trail near Willow Street. A total of 18 students were on a walking field trip to a nearby park and crossing Pony Express Trail with their teacher when the appliance van hit five of the children. Three of them were seriously injured; all three survived their injuries.

The preschoolers were students of Pine Top Montessori School, just a few blocks away from where the crash occurred.

The van was heading west on Pony Express Trail directly into the children, who were walking in the marked crosswalk in front of the 50 Grand restaurant, according to the CHP. The driver stopped the van soon after the vehicle hit the children.

The CHP said the driver then got out of the van in an attempt to help the injured children. He told officers that he saw an injured girl in the middle of the road and tried to move her, but in a panic forgot to put the van in park. The CHP said the van rolled backward, but the vehicle did not hit anyone else before it was stopped. The driver then grabbed his phone and sat on a curb.

The CHP investigating officer determined the driver was at fault, citing unsafe speed as the primary crash factor. He told officers he was driving about 40 mph in a 35 mph zone and he thought he might have been looking down at his GPS device moments before he looked up and saw children in the road and applied the brakes, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

The CHP officers at the scene did not spot signs the driver was impaired by alcohol or drugs. The road was dry, the weather was clear and sunny, and there was an unobstructed view of the crosswalk, according to the CHP.

Prosecutors said the CHP’s Multi-disciplinary Accident Investigation Team was not involved in the investigation, so the CHP did not make any specific speed calculation.

Reconstruction of vehicle crash with pedestrians

The District Attorney’s Office hired R.W. Snook and Company, which is based in Galt and on its website calls itself a “customer-oriented collision reconstruction firm,” to reconstruct the crash using a digital scan.

The firm created a three-dimensional model of the crash site; a topographic and forensic site survey; images of the site captured with an aerial drone; photos and video of the area at the time of the crash; digital scans and images of the appliance van; a visibility assessment of the road; and speed estimates from collected video provided by the 50 Grand restaurant.

A report from the crash reconstruction listed the van’s estimated speed at 37 mph and decelerating to 30 mph just before the vehicle struck the children in the crosswalk. There was no evidence the van had mechanical defects or damage or that the vehicle was in a state of disrepair that led to the crash.

The van, based on the vehicle’s steady rate of speed, would have been 9 to 10 seconds — or more than 500 feet — from the crosswalk when the group started walking across the street, according to the reconstruction report. The van would have been 6 to 7 seconds from the crosswalk when the lead adult in the group crossed the center line of the crosswalk.

With the group fully in the crosswalk, the driver applied the brakes 22 feet before the van hit the children, according to the report.

After the crash, he handed authorities his two cellphones, which were forensically analyzed. The reconstruction report indicated that Spotify and Google Maps were running on the driver’s personal phone at the time of the crash, and the last communication on the phone was an incoming message received about 16 minutes before the crash.

The reconstruction of the crash also determined weather conditions did not contribute to the crash, the driver’s view was not obstructed (the sun was behind the driver) and the road’s design did not contribute to the crash and no vehicle crashes were reported at that location in the previous 10 years.

Pollock Pines sits alongside Highway 50, the main route used by travelers between the Sacramento area and South Lake Tahoe. The town is commonly visited by campers stopping for supplies or food.

But it is also home to about 6,500 residents, and county officials often hear that drivers along Pony Express Trail lose sight of other vehicles among the hills and tall trees. At a community meeting in June in response to the pedestrian crash, residents complained about hardly ever seeing law enforcement officials, including the CHP or the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office, patrolling the roads for speeders or other traffic violations.

Plan for road improvements on Pony Express Trail

The county has had a plan, which has been in the works since 2018, to add road improvements on Pony Express Trail from Sly Park Road to Sanders Drive. Those road improvements include moving the crosswalk near Willow — where the children were hit by the van — farther east and adding a sign with flashing lights that can be activated by pedestrians before they enter the road.

In October, the El Dorado County Board of Supervisors approved more than $4 million in safety improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists on Pony Express Trail through Pollock Pines.

“The people of Pollock Pines have been worried about this area, accented by the tragedy with the children getting hit in the crosswalk,” said Supervisor Brooke Laine at the Oct. 10 meeting. “And if we could’ve prevented that accident, we would’ve done everything in our power to do that. It was just awful timing.”

The three seriously injured children, Jacory, Axel and Juniper, have all since been released from the hospital, according to GoFundMe online fundraisers created to financially support their recovery. Juniper was the last to be released from the hospital; she was able to return home in mid-August.