The OC Register
TUSTIN, Calif. — A naked man was struck and killed by a pickup Friday morning after he jumped out of an ambulance and into freeway lanes, the California Highway Patrol said.
The accident occurred after the man, who sheriff’s deputies had picked up for a mental evaluation, escaped from an ambulance on northbound I-5 just south of the 55, authorities said.
The man was originally picked up by deputies responding to reports of a possibly suicidal 21-year-old at a home in the 23000 block of Eagle Ridge Drive in Mission Viejo about8 p.m. Thursday, said Jim Amormino, an Orange County Sheriff’s Department spokesman.
The man agreed to go with deputies for a mental evaluation at Mission Hospital.
Mission Hospital officials treated the man and decided that he needed to be taken to a facility in Los Angeles, Amormino added.
The man reportedly began to act erratically on the ambulance ride to Los Angeles about 7:45 a.m. Friday. The driver of the ambulance was forced to stop along the center divider of I-5, said John Patterson, a CHP officer.
“He was getting out of his restraints, so they went to readjust the restraints, and that is when he broke free,” Amormino said.
Patterson said the man jumped over a concrete center divider, ran across the southbound I-5 lanes, and then ran into the southbound 55 connector to southbound I-5.
At that point, authorities say, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy grabbed the man and attempted to calm him down.
The man broke free from the deputy and jumped in front of a pickup, which struck and killed him, Patterson said.
The man, who authorities have not identified, was pronounced dead at the scene. It wasn’t clear why the man wasn’t wearing clothes when he was struck.
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Orange County Register (California)