Video from two of five cameras on a Los Angeles Sanitation truck shows the vehicle reversing into an alley on January 25 in Sherman Oaks, just moments before it ran over a man. The mother of that man is now suing the driver and the City of Los Angeles.
“My son was taken from me,” Sara Toral, whose 35-year-old son David Soto Toral was killed, told NBC4. “You can’t describe the pain because sometimes the pain is so unbearable.”
Toral said her son David was an ambitious young man who often worked in the entertainment industry, but struggled with addiction.
In the early morning hours of January 25, a surveillance camera captured him in front of the Sherman Oaks apartment of a friend, apparently coming down from a drug binge, according to family. Hours later at 11 a.m., neighbors told the I-Team they saw him sitting in the alley behind the apartment with a blanket around him, since it was a chilly day.
“I could clearly see that it’s a person,” one neighbor who asked not to be identified told the I-Team.
At 11:36 a.m., a city garbage truck began backing into the alley where David Toral was sitting to empty trash cans.
The California DMV Commercial Driver Handbook tells truck drivers, including Sanitation truck drivers, to “avoid backing [up] whenever you can … when you have to back [up] … get out and walk around the vehicle [first], and then “always back [up] as slowly as possible.”
But the video from cameras mounted on the trash truck involved in the accident does not show the truck stopping or a driver walking around before it backed up and then hit David Soto-Toral.
The Toral’s family attorney, Robert Brennan, told the I-Team that video has now been reviewed “frame by frame” by an accident reconstruction specialist, who opined that the truck was clearly gaining speed as it ran over the victim.
“As soon as the truck is going towards the alleyway, it starts picking up speed,” Brennan told the I-Team. “He should have gotten out of the truck, made sure his coast was clear, before backing up. That is clear protocol.”
Back in March, Sara Toral filed a wrongful death claim against LA, which is usually the first step in legal action against the city. Toral’s was denied. So now, she’s filed a lawsuit against the city and against the garbage truck driver, seeking damages for the loss of her son.
Her lawyer says those videos from the trash truck “will be Exhibit A” if the case against the city and the driver goes to trial.
“We want the jury to see not only his lack of attention, but whatever he was paying attention to, he was not paying attention to what he was backing up and backing over in the alley,” attorney Brennan said.
As the I-Team has reported, there have been multiple accidents involving LA Sanitation trucks in recent years, including another fatal accident in San Pedro last December, where a trash truck hit and killed a pedestrian.
Sara Toral hopes her lawsuit against the city will ensure drivers follow rules and protocols and be more careful.
“My son was taken from me” Toral told NBC4. “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. Because no one should feel the pain that I feel. No one.”
NBC4 asked the LA Sanitation Department to answer questions about those videos from the garbage truck and about the lawsuit. It responded by simply saying “We cannot comment on pending litigation.”
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