More Carnage in Downtown Fullerton
So reports the Register, here. Seems a serious accident took place. Wednesday, at 1:45 in the morning.
Apparently some pedestrians (i.e. jaywalkers) were crossing mid-block on Harbor between Santa Fe and Commonwealth. They were smacked by a northbound vehicle into the southbound lane, where injury was added to injury. The victims were reported to be in critical condition at UCI, favored treatment locale for DTF trauma victims.
In what must have been an attempt at deadpan humor, the register’s Denisse Salazar’s writes:
The investigation is continuing, and it’s not yet known if alcohol played a role in the accident.
Of course we will be told that the open air booze-a-thon created by the Fullerton City Council played no part in the accident.
Condolences and best wishes to those injured and their families.
I work at Disneyland, sometimes as late as 2 am. I never take Harbor home. Not since some of the vibrant night life decided to throw beer bottles at my car. Can someone tell me how having a higher concentration of bars than the Vegas strip sets Downtown Fullerton apart?
Beer bottles have been thrown at your car??
Yes one dark night in 2010, as I was driving home, foolishly through Downtown Fullerton, shortly after last call.
I would NOT have been happy about that!!
My prayers and hopes for a speedy recovery to all…….I’m so sorry….
As a Mother of grown children, this breaks my heart. My daughters live out of State, but when they come to visit, they love to go to DTF. I always stay awake and wait for them to call or come home……THE LIFE OF A PARENT…..
Auto Ped TCs are the worst. Especially involving a drunk driver. Usually the Ped is at fault and the drunk gets dragged into it by timing. Hard lesson to learn from. Hope the Ped is ok.
Most reasonable thing you’ve posted in a while. Mark the calendar, because we’re in agreement here.
🙂
I can’t imagine that alcohol did not play a part in the incident. Unless their blood alcohol level is through the stratosphere, how can someone cross a street and not see a car coming at them? What a hell of a mess that area must be at night! Fullerton, a college town? Sounds more like party town, USA!
I have two cops in my family and I have heard some absolutely horrific stories about collisions caused by drunk drivers. High school kids should be lectured to on the graphic details of what can and will happen while driving drunk!
there is a program in several local HS that does exactly that; I’ve seen it publicized for schools in the Brea/Yorba Linda/Anaheim area. It’s a very realistic event, including totalled cars, dead and injured “victims”, etc. I can’t remember the name of the program, sorry
Every 15 Minutes. Awesome program.
All on overtime with the same grant money that does checkpoints and saturation patrols.
If it saves lives, it’s worth every penny!
by looking at all the paint markers on the street it looks to be a pretty serious accident.
alcohol is now on the menu for the fullerton tennis center.
yep the damn alcohol circus ,
the town I live in
How horrible!
This accident reminds me of North San Diego Co in the 70s. People used to get killed crossing back and forth along a stretch of PCH. It wasn’t until several had been hit in the highway that they decided to put in a signal. But, they did not reduce the amount of drinking establishments that were concentrated there. And we all thought we were having fun then.
Here’s the tie-in. The bars shut down around 2:00 AM, right?
Still traffic has got to be pretty light at that hour. It almost seems like you’d have to jump in front of a car on purpose.
Heading west across Harbor. Any guesses where they were coming from? Slidebar?
Yes, exactly right. Sounds like they just walked out in front of the oncoming vehicles as if they weren’t there.
If it had been raining they could have used 8 or 9 of those 200 raincoats they just bought.
As I think about the downtown situation, I wonder if there is any legal standing to limit the number of bars and restaurants that can open in a given area. If the council were to deny licenses and permits to prospective businesses, would those applicants have any legal recourse? It seems the genie is out of the bottle with respect to all the places to party in the downtown area and all the craziness that has been created because of them. If this situation was truly created by the council, then this is another valid reason for RECALL!!
This situation was deliberately created by the council: specifically Jones and Bankhead. Jones has even taken responsibility – and then kept subsidizing the restaurants turned night clubs.
Profitable businesses bring MONEY into the city coffers! Follow the MONEY TRAIL!
Yes. Let’s look at Big Tony Florentine, anti-recall stooge. A quick history:
Builds building addition on public sidewalk;
Illegally converts restaurant into nightclub;
Gets retroactive okie-dokie;
Gets taxpayer subsidized fire water main to continue operation.
We should all feel so proud that the Register writer refers to our downtown as “the downtown bar area in Fullerton” every time that she references Fullerton.
And we all know that it’s each and every resident of Fullerton is paying the salaries of the Police and Fire departments who have to respond to the alcohol induced murder and mayhem that’s found each and every weekend here in Fullerton.
I hate to sound cynical, however when I look at the picture at the top of the page, I see three of the largest political donors to Bankhead,McKinley,and Jones campaigns for City Council.
1. The Fullerton Police department PAC
2. The Fullerton Fire department PAC
3. Care Ambulance
…coincidence or do these people in fact derive a boat load of overtime by allowing this carnage to fester in downtown Fullerton at the rest of our expense? I know it sounds sort of parasitic, however I can’t see any reason why the City Council wouldn’t start issuing stricter conditional use permits to bar owners, and start limiting drink specials that are commonplace in the downtown bars, since they have to compete with each other for college age customers on limited budgets.
Good question.
And of course the worst and most expensive consequence of Doc Jones’ Wild West Show is bringing in a cadre of goon-cops to police all the douchebags Jones invited it.
That’s what killed Kelly Thomas.
At one time there was reported to be 65 saloons in town. Among the saloons were numerous brothels and ‘houses of ill repute’, gambling halls and opium dens – an entertainment outlet for everyone.
from http://www.bodie.com/#ixzz1hl7QNCJE
– Bodie.com
SOUND FAMILIAR??
Tombstone once sported 140 bars on its main street, see how well the town did with all of this “commerce”?
Seems the Old West is alive and well in Fullerton!
Ummmm, yup!
Accountability breeds responsibility. I believe that the Police department should be pro-active and start determining where pedestrians/motorists were drinking at, and go back and watch the bar’s CCTV to determine whether or not the owners of the bar were negligent in serving these patrons too much to drink. If they did serve patrons when they’re already too drunk to walk, the council should start suspending and pulling liquor licenses for 30-180 days to allow business owners enough time to implement responsible changes in the way that they serve alcohol, rather than doing nothing at all.
I read the city makes a penny of every dollar on the drinking. Really makes me wonder whats really happening in the town.
Somebody told me you can get anything at a Bar.
This is a tragedy to say the least. You will know a tree by its fruit and there you have it. The city is spending over $100,000 A MONTH more than the tax revenues that are generated on costs associated with this disaster. The cost to the general public is even higher such as medical costs from incidents such as this, legal bills and missed work and hard earned money extracted practically at gun point from questionable as well as legitimate DUI’s and the resultant vehicle impounds, legal bills and missed work from questionable as well as legitmate arrests, the traffic accidents, sexual assaults, vandalism, and the deferred heath care costs as a result of the destruction of the public health from the greasy slop and booze being slung by these merchants. I wonder just how much sales tax goes unreported from these businesses as well. It is a lose lose for Fullerton taxpayers and a win win for the business owners. Order out of chaos as a modus operandus is a giant financial vampire. The businesses that create the chaos need to hire THEIR OWN SECURITY FORCE AT THEIR EXPENSE TO MANTAIN ORDER AND SAFETY IN THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT OF FULLERTON. We need to call off the police and POST SIGNS THAT STATE ” ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK” When the business owners ante up and hire their own version of blackwater they can then take the signs down. It is beginning to look more and more like Calle Revolucion in TJ down there. Lets just hope the other nefarious trends that are commonplace in TJ dont manifest in our downtown. Who knows maybe they already are. We need to do something soon and our leaders need to act or we need to replace the leaders. The choice is Fullerton’s choice. We have a say and the last one at that.
I wonder how many attorney’s (their secretary’s, the landlords who rent them office space, the janitors that clean their office space, etc…) are now making a living off of the mess the city council has created in DTF.
TJ’s Calle Revolution is no longer a place one needs to travel to to get all f-ed up in a drunken stooper.
If these guys wandered snockered out of Slidebar that City owners camera probably has it on record. That might be interesting liability-wise.
A while back someone told me the buissneses, big and small were leaving Fullerton because of the City Council. Does anyone have any details?
Sad. I hope they recover. This is what I’ve always feared would happen. There have been several times I’ve had to swerve to avoid hitting people that were partying at one of the many bars as they would just jump into the lane off the curb almost as a dare. I take it especially slow through that area. I also see a lot of pedestrians who completely ignore the the traffic signals and slow traffic. The street is too narrow for all the ped/vehicle/cyclist traffic in that area. Not sure what the solution is. I just hope everyone slows down and pays close attention while driving.
It is very sad when this kind of accident happens. Let us hope and pray that all involved make a 100% recovery.
Owens River Valley on your blog page?
I will never understand why some people continue to walk outside of a crosswalk. Coming up that hill at the Santa Fe and Harbor is a total blind spot. I hope the pedestrians are okay.
This would normally be ok to cross here, an unmarked crosswalk, which most intersections are. But due to it being hazardous and prior close calls, they put the signs up to assist peds in crossing safely. Too bad some had to take a risk and they paid.
booze makes people do stupid things…..shocker?
can anyone say…12 BARS O X-Mas……hello bar owners…you better pay up.
Here’s a link with a little more info regarding the victims conditions
http://cerritos.patch.com/articles/video-cerritos-man-critical-after-being-struck-by-two-vehicles-while-jaywalking-in-fullerton#video-8765154
Nice video. I spy the famous “go home or go to jail” cop.
The video says people are warned not cross there. Are there warning signs?
http://g.co/maps/mve9m
…of course the signs aren’t facing the sidewalk where pedestrians can actually read them. Can’t they do anything right in Fullerton?
That was funny. But they need bigger signs. No one under the influence would see them.
They are facing the direction where pads aren’t supposed to cross at. Telling them to move farther left to go across. Sad situation. Peds screwed up by crossing and the driver screwed up by drinking and driving. No one wins.
oh yeah, there’s office Mctoughtalk
When in my usual drunken stupor, it is difficult to read signs. In addition, my friends take some things to enhance their enjoyment of downtown Fullerton. How are they gonna read some small obscure sign?
Privately owned bars are notorious for underreporting income which of course means less sales tax revenue to the City of Fullerton. Bars are also notorious for having slush fund monies for politicians and free food for uniformed PD personnel. Regular contributions are made to city councils and redevelopment commissions to obtain conditional use permits. These always include a police department report on what they observed and the number of incidents.
Traffic accidents are a byproduct of these unholy alliances. Just ask Father Ramirez, my worldly brother.