Some were merely curious. Others came to pay their respects. The focal point was a parking stall in the mauka/diamondhead corner of the lot, cordoned off with yellow tape.

That stall marked the runaway truck's point of impact after it had left Makakilo Drive, plowed through an off-ramp and flew over an embankment into the parking lot. A large hole in the middle of the stall was filled with chunks of paving material.

Near the hole, visitors placed bouquets at the base of a small Polynesian kou tree, which had become a memorial.

The crash of the runaway truck killed Mark Roben, shown here with wife Jackie and their son, Dustin, who is draped in a lei of treats. Photo courtesy Roben Family

Saplot said she had come to place a poinsettia by the tree. Her daughter, Jackie, was not with her. Jackie and Mark Roben had been in the process of reconciling their marriage, Saplot said, and the tragedy has been especially painful for her daughter.

"I don't want her to go there yet," Saplot said later from her home in Wai'anae. "I know that it would be good for her to do that. But I don't know how she'll react to it at this point, and I don't want to see any more pain."

She said the couple's son, Dustin, 5, was having difficulty accepting the loss of his father, who had coached Dustin's Little Rascals soccer team. The boy and his father "were pals," she said.

"We told him his daddy had been in an accident and that now he's in heaven and we won't be able to see him," said Saplot, unable to hold back her tears. "And he understands that heaven is a nice and a good place to be. But he doesn't want to accept the idea that he cannot see his daddy.

"He wants to know if he can go see his daddy. He wanted to know if his daddy works in heaven."

Raymond Viela, who works for Honolulu Disposal Service, gazed quietly at the gap in the 4-foot hedge at the top of the embankment where the truck had gone airborne and sailed over another 4-foot hedge, 30 feet away, at the bottom of the embankment.

Viela said that normally he's the one who travels with Tipasa Save, the driver of the runaway truck, who told police that he had lost his air brakes coming down Makakilo Drive. Viela said a schedule change on Friday, due to an illness, altered the customary order of assignments.

"I would have been on that truck," Viela said. "But there was somebody that wasn't coming to work, so I had to go cover his shift. Otherwise, I probably would have helped Tipasa. Mark probably would have got another route — because me and Tipasa was always together."

Viela said his bosses, who talked to Save at the hospital on Friday, told him the driver — originally listed in serious condition but later in fair condition — suffered broken shoulders and broken ribs and was in a lot of pain.

He said he would be visiting Save himself as soon as his friend is well enough. He expressed sorrow over the death of Roben, who he said had been with the company for only a month but was popular with co-workers.

A crew from Penco, Pacific Environment Corp., an environmental cleanup company, worked at the site Friday until around midnight filling seven 55-gallon drums with nonhazardous material that was spilled.

Teal Cross, operations manager for Penco, said the amount of waste material was minuscule compared with most spills that the company handles. Still, Cross was dumfounded by the thought of a 35,000-pound truck flying so far through the air while hauling an estimated 8 tons of garbage.

"I mean, he landed right over there on the pavement," said Cross, indicating the point of impact. "He cleared the second hedge and didn't even touch the grass. What I can't figure out is how fast he must have been going to do that."

On Friday, police surveyed the accident scene for hours from every angle to try to answer that question.

Clyde Calhoun, a professional accident reconstructionist and investigator, whose company, Technical Consulting Services, does work for attorneys and insurance companies, said he was not there yesterday on official business but was there simply to study the scene and work out a "projectile analysis."

Calhoun, with 24 years of experience in the business, offered an off-the-cuff synopsis of what might have taken place.

He said that the embankment at the "launch point" was about 12› feet high and that the truck flew some 50 feet before slamming into the pavement.

He estimated the truck's speed at 45 mph when it left the ground. He said it might not seem fast unless you take into account the size and mass of the airborne vehicle.

Calhoun said the impact probably ejected the driver and passenger and caused the truck to flip over. Bad as the outcome was, he said, more people might have been killed had the truck not turned over.

"He still has momentum, then he hits and he slides a little more than the length of his truck," said Calhoun, who concluded that the sliding acted as a brake. "If he hadn't rolled on his side, that truck would have been in the building."

That would have put the truck inside Chili's Bar & Grill, which was full of customers at noon.