ORANGE : Man, 70, Killed as Car, Truck Collide

Royal Dean Fadely was trying to do his son a favor by taking a look at his dishwasher before the repairman came. When he left his son’s condo Tuesday morning to return home, he was struck by a tractor-trailer and killed.

Police said Rialto resident Leanne Fargon, 30, was driving the truck carrying sand off a hill on Chapman Avenue just east of Crawford Canyon Road. Fadely, 70, was driving south on Crawford Canyon.

Police said both vehicles were in the intersection when the truck struck the driver’s side of Farley’s white Thunderbird. Police could not determine who ran the red light. No traffic tickets were issued, and Fargon was released at the scene.

Fadely, a 17-year resident of Tustin and a retired advertising manager, was pronounced dead about 20 minutes after the accident while still pinned in his car. An official from the coroner’s office said Fadely was wearing his seat belt but that it didn’t help since the truck smashed directly into the door on the driver’s side.

Several area residents gathered around the scene and spoke about the frequent accidents that occur at the intersection, which is at the bottom of a hill outside Santiago Canyon, where a lot of construction work has taken place in the last few years, residents said.

Ron Roper, a driver’s education teacher at Santa Ana High School, has lived in a house about 100 feet from the intersection for about 10 years and said at least one serious accident happens there every six months.

“When you have the green arrow at that intersection, you don’t assume the other trucks are going to stop,” he said, referring to facing traffic that is coming down the hill. He said he has often waited at a green turn signal while fast-moving vehicles, mostly trucks, ran red lights. He said that many car drivers also speed down Crawford Canyon Road.

“No amount of engineering is going to stop an accident if someone runs a red light,” said Chuck Glass, a traffic engineer with the city of Orange. He added that all city equipment in the area, including the lights, was working properly.

Glass would not comment on the safety of the intersection compared to that of other intersections, but said that one fatal accident there every six months was possible. The speed limit on the hill just east of the intersection is 45 m.p.h., he said.

The city installed a traffic light about halfway down the hill several months ago, residents said, and the signal has helped slow traffic. Glass said the light was installed to accommodate traffic from new housing developments, not because of the truck traffic.