Truck driver in fatal Pali crash arrested
By Mike Gordon and Peter Boylan
Advertiser Staff Writers
Police have arrested the driver of a dump truck involved in a fatal collision Tuesday on the Pali Highway on suspicion of second-degree negligent homicide.
Authorities were investigating yesterday whether the truck and driver were properly licensed. Police at the scene Tuesday said the driver did not have a commercial license.
Edmond H. Schuman, 32, of Kailua was arrested a few hours after the 11:44 a.m. crash and later released. He was not available for comment yesterday. His mother said he has no permanent address.
The truck, a 1991 International dump truck with a load of gravel, was headed toward Honolulu when it veered over an embankment that divides the highway, colliding head-on with a 1992 Mazda van.
A passenger in the van, Huong Thi Truong, 54, of Honolulu, was critically injured and died at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday at The Queen's Medical Center. She was the 81st traffic fatality this year, compared with 66 at the same time last year.
Sgt. Alan Vegas of the police vehicular homicide section said the dump truck's brakes may have failed and that the truck may have been speeding.
Because the dump truck is a commercial vehicle of more than 20,000 pounds, it must be inspected annually by a certified inspector, and the driver must possess a commercial drivers license, Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa said yesterday.
Ishikawa said Transportation Department officials were helping police to determine whether those two criteria had been met, but would not say yesterday what the investigation had revealed.
The dump truck is owned by Rick's Heavy Equipment of Kailua. No one at the company returned phone calls yesterday.
Two other vehicles traveling behind the Mazda, one of them a city Handi-Van, were also involved in the accident. Three other people were injured.
The crash closed the highway in both directions for nearly four hours, snarling traffic in the Kailua-bound direction from the Punchbowl cutoff to the Queen Emma Summer Palace.
Some Kailua-bound lanes remained closed yesterday morning.
Donnie Gates, assistant chief of city Emergency Medical Services, said all of the injured people were taken to Queen's, including one in serious condition and two with minor injuries.
Police said the 52-year-old driver of the Mazda was in serious condition when he was taken to Queen's Tuesday.
Rosita Wong, a Nu'uanu resident who was directly behind the van, said she saw the tractor-trailer barreling toward her on the Kailua-bound side near Country Club Road and the palace, and immediately slammed on her brakes. She said she saw the truck hit the van and then flip over onto the grass.
Wong's windshield was shattered by flying debris.
Advertiser staff writers Rod Ohira and Karen Blakeman contributed to this report. Reach Mike Gordon at 525-8012 or mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.
