A woman is dead after a 50,000-pound tractor drove over her while she was asleep on a Southern California beach.
According to reports, the woman, who has been identified as Carol Aguirre, was a 68-year-old transient at the time of her death. She was lying in the sand at a beach near Oceanside Harbor, just north of San Diego. The wheel loader that ran over the woman was in the process of removing pipes from a dredging project at about 10 a.m. on Monday morning. Oceanside Police Department Spokesman Tom Bussey said the driver thought he’d hit a hole, but realized he’d run over the woman when he turned around.
Jay Burneo, a surfer who was on the beach and saw the woman a few hours earlier, told KGTV that he was worried about her when he noticed her before the accident. “The lady was leaning up against the wall,” he told KGTV. “[She] looked like she was having a hard time holding herself up. I was concerned about her and we asked her if she was OK and she seemed OK.”
Manson Construction, the company that is running the dredging project, released a statement about the accident. “All of us are devastated,” the company’s president, John Holmes, said. “We know, too, that her family and loving friends must also be devastated. And to them, I want to express my sincerest and deepest sorrow that this tragedy occurred.”
