Martinez, CA : 32-year-old Woman killed when a gravel truck spilled its load in Martinez on Monday afternoon, March 23, 2015

A 32-year-old mother was killed when a construction truck carrying gravel tipped over onto her car Monday afternoon, police said.

No one else was injured.

The accident happened about 1:05 p.m., on Shell Avenue near Pine Street, at a city capital improvement project using private construction workers under contract, Martinez police Lt. Aaron Roth said. Officers found the truck on top of a car in front of a home on the hilly street.

Officials did not identify the person killed, but family at the scene confirmed she was Lindsey Combs, 32, mother of a 4-year-old girl. Her brother, Robert Combs, said that "this could have been avoided."

Neighbor Travis Hegarthy said he was home at the time of the accident and grabbed a fire extinguisher before he ran outside, thinking the loud noise he heard meant there had been a bad car crash.

"It sounded like two cars going 80 mph going head on into each other," Hegarthy said. "I didn't expect to see a dump truck on top of a car."

Hegarthy said he joined several construction workers trying to get the woman out of the car, but the sheer weight of the truck made it impossible. One worker jumped into a backhoe to try to drag the truck off, but even that machine couldn't do it, he said.

Martinez police told investigators from the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health that an employee from JJR Construction driving a truck filled with gravel asked a woman to move her car in the area of 820 Shell Ave., Cal-OSHA spokeswoman Julia Bernstein said.

After she got into the car to move it, the truck's gravel load fell over the right side, crushing her inside the car, according to the initial reports to Cal-OSHA.

San Mateo-based JJR Construction was cited in 2010 by Cal-OSHA for a minor safety violation, Bernstein said. It's the company's only citation in five years.

Shell Avenue was closed to traffic as crews tried to determine how to move the truck. It was reopened shortly before 10 p.m.

Source :
Martinez woman killed when gravel truck tips over, crushes car