DRIVER ARRESTED AFTER CRASH THAT KILLS THREE
Six others injured when car plows into homeless encampment along B Street
Chaos unfolded in a tunnel near San Diego City College on Monday morning when a possibly impaired driver veered onto a sidewalk lined with homeless people in tents, killing three and injuring several others.
Witnesses said the car jumped the curb and plowed through the crowded concrete encampment, as people slept and huddled to escape the rain.
Police arrested the driver, identified as Craig Martin Voss, 71, of San Diego, on suspicion of gross vehicular manslaughter, injuring someone while committing a felony, and one count of driving while impaired by drugs. He remained jailed Monday evening in lieu of $1 million bail.
Authorities said Voss was headed west on B Street, west of 16th Street, about 9 a.m., when his Volvo veered right and plowed through people on the sidewalk.
In addition to the three people who were killed, five others were injured — two critically — and a sixth person declined to be taken to a hospital for treatment. Footage from OnScene TV shows police guiding a dazed man who was missing a shoe as
he limped to a triage area. Medics helped another man to a gurney.
San Diego Police Chief David Nisleit told reporters that, shortly before the crash, the department received a radio call of a possibly impaired driver, and the car from that incident matched the car from the crash scene. He also said Voss stopped after the crash and tried to help the victims.
At a later news conference, Nisleit said Voss was “cooperative with our investigators,” but declined to discuss any statements Voss may have made.
Authorities believe most or all of the victims — adults whose ages and genders were unavailable — are homeless. People who are homeless often take shelter in the tunnel, and tents usually line the sidewalk there — more so given Monday’s wet weather. Esteban Hernandez, 46, was tucked in his tent when he heard screeching tires — then his tent spun. He crawled out to a chaotic scene, with people screaming for help.
“I just tried to comfort them, let them know it was going to be all right,” he said.
One man Hernandez knew was hurt, but breathing. Another was dead.
“It wasn’t someone I was really close to, but it still ... it still hurts,” Hernandez said.
Lisa Brotzman, 52, said she looked out her tent window just as the car swerved to the right shoulder, “spun out of control” and jumped the sidewalk where people were waiting out the rain.
“Someone was screaming, ‘Ahhh! Ahhhh!’ ” she said. “Two or three people were yelling and screaming. It was scary.” Not long after the crash, a dark-colored car — an old Volvo station wagon with a smashed windshield — could be seen in the tunnel. A bike tire was wedged underneath it. More bikes, cardboard boxes and mangled tents littered the street.
The crash happened on a stretch of B Street west of 16th and east of Park Boulevard. The top of the tunnel is known as Curran Plaza and is part of the community college. Although it’s the middle
of the semester, students weren’t in the area; San Diego City College is providing instruction online because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michael McConnell, an advocate for homeless people, immediately headed to the crash scene. He arrived and quickly spotted an elderly man sitting on the sidewalk. He said the man was in the rain, alone and “weeping.”
McConnell grabbed a blanket, a tarp and water bottle from his car and helped the man to a drier spot. The man told him it “happened really fast.”
“He didn’t hear anything. Didn’t hear brakes, didn’t hear screeching. It just happened,” McConnell said.
“I gave him a hug,” he said. “What do you do when people see something like that? Nothing I can say. He needs help. All these folks need help.”
McConnell said officials came by and offered to take the man to the shelter at the San Diego Convention Center.
“I can’t believe this is the
best we can offer people who have just been through this,” McConnell said. “A bed in a 700-bed shelter? It’s just pathetic. Our homeless system is pathetic and our response is pathetic.”
He said people headed to the tunnel, with its wide sidewalk, knowing rain was coming. “They’re just keeping warm,” McConnell said. “Especially if you don’t have a tent. You don’t want to be on the sidewalk without cover.” Mayor Todd Gloria also acknowledged that the rain likely forced unsheltered people to take cover in the tunnel, leading to greater devastation.
“Because of the rain both last night and this morning, we have to assume that more people were congregating there than normal and as a consequence possibly made this even more of a significant tragedy,” he said.
As of January 2020 — prepandemic and the most recent countywide count available — the annual point-intime count found 7,658 homeless people throughout all of San Diego County,
a 5 percent decrease from 2019. Of that number, nearly 4,000 were without shelter.
After the pandemic hit, the city opened up the convention center as a shelter to house up to 1,300 people from three temporary shelters in the region. As of Monday, there were 599 people staying there. The site is closing next week, and those staying there will be moved to different shelters.
In February, according to the Downtown San Diego Partnership, a monthly count focused solely on downtown San Diego found 668 people sleeping on the streets.
The mayor arrived at the site shortly after the crash, and said the incident highlighted the risk of “allowing our most vulnerable to find housing on our sidewalks as opposed to proper homes.”
At an afternoon news conference, Gloria said that the people sleeping along the sidewalk “were there because they felt as if they had no other place they could go.”
“Let me state it very
clearly: A street is not a home,” Gloria said. “It’s not humane or safe to keep allowing our unsheltered neighbors to sleep under bridges, in alleys or in canyons.”
He said the city would work to return the belongings from the crash scene to their hospitalized owners. He also said he “will not turn a blind eye to homelessness.”
“We cannot and we will not turn our back on those who died this morning,” Gloria said. “We must make sure that they did not die in vain.”
Councilman Stephen Whitburn, who represents the district where the crash happened, also headed to the crash site, where he watched from behind crime scene tape as police investigators worked. “This is a heartbreaking loss of life,” he said.
Whitburn later issued a statement calling the incident “stark evidence of the need to find permanent solutions to the homelessness crisis so that no San Diegans are forced to seek shelter in unsafe places such as under bridges and in tunnels that vehicles pass through.”
On Monday evening, several people gathered outside the tunnel entrance. Some wrote messages in chalk — “RIP Randy,” “RIP Rodney.”
Community groups that help homeless people also stood by offering pizza, water, blankets and other items to address material needs as people grieved.
Ellie Coburn didn’t know the victims, but showed up at the site Monday night — her young daughter strapped to her back — to pay her respects.
“Both of my children are adopted through foster care, and both of their families have experienced homelessness,” Coburn said.
“Just trying to show my children that this is the very real side of San Diego,” Coburn said. “And also just trying to show my support for individuals that seem to fly under the radar most every day of our lives.”
As it got dark, a woman set up a tent on the sidewalk about 100 feet from the makeshift memorial. Nearby, a man said he wasn’t worried about a repeat of Monday’s crash. He said it was worth the risk to sleep in the area to avoid the rain and cold. Monday’s crash comes a month after two homeless men sleeping under bushes in Escondido were run over by an SUV and killed. Police said the driver in the Feb. 12 crash was a 13year-old who had taken her mother’s car and was trying to evade police when she lost control and veered onto the sidewalk.
In September, a 68-yearold homeless woman lying on the sand at Oceanside Harbor was killed when a large tractor ran over her.
In April 2018, a driver ran over a military veteran sleeping on a Hillcrest sidewalk. The driver fled. The veteran died.