A man who was killed in a crash near La Honda late Thursday morning has been identified by the coroner’s office as Luis Audelo-Partida, 26, of Newark.
The fatal crash involved workers who were performing weed abatement for the Midpeninsula Open Space District, a California Highway Patrol spokesman said.
The crash was reported at 11:22 a.m. in the vicinity of Alpine and Mindego Hill roads, in a rural area of San Mateo County near the Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve. It appears the vehicle involved was being driven in an area without a paved road and somehow went out of control and tumbled into a canyon, according to the CHP.
The CHP reported earlier Thursday that three people had died, but CHP Sgt. Matt Otterby said Thursday afternoon there is only one confirmed fatality. Two other people suffered major injuries and were airlifted to hospitals, Otterby said.
Three people suffered minor injuries and one person was uninjured, CHP Officer Kevin Bartlett said. Rescue crews are having trouble reaching the crash site, which is only accessible by foot and horseback, he said.
“We’re going in slow motion because it’s so hard to get to everyone,” Bartlett said.
Three medical helicopters were dispatched to the area, he said. The people who were in the vehicle that crashed are contractors who were out spraying non-native plants for the open space district, district spokesman Gordon Baillie said.
Baillie said he did not yet have much information on the crash. The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, the San Mateo County Fire Department and other agencies responded to the crash.
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Re this fatal crash on the Mindego; have the sheriff’s deputies investigated foul play, like “engineering” of the road by local marijuana growers to keep people out of the area? All it takes is a load of round rocks in the right place.
Who was the contractor? Was he required to use E-Verify to ensure that he did not hire (and exploit) illegal aliens? Were the workers provided with appropriate safety measures? When the inevitable major lawsuit goes down, will the MOSD claim that it has no responsibility to verfy safety and legal status? Contractor cutouts is how the official districts, including Palo Alto, exploit workers.