Off-road racer won’t be charged

LUCERNE VALLEY, Calif. – The crowd at the off-road race could almost touch the trucks as they hurtled and bounced over the desert sand. They were close enough for one mistake to end eight lives.

Hundreds of thrill-seeking fans watched in horror Saturday night as one racer took a jump at high speed, hit his brakes on landing and rolled his truck sideways into spectators, sending bodies flying on a section of track that had no guardrails or anything else to keep the crowd back. Eight people were killed and 12 were injured at the California 200, a race in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

“You could touch it if you wanted to. It’s part of the excitement,” said 19-year-old Niky Carmikle, who stood sobbing over a makeshift memorial on the spot of the crash Sunday. Her boyfriend, 24-year-old Zachary Freeman, of Ventura, was killed in the crash. “There’s always that risk factor, but you just don’t expect that it will happen to you.”

California Highway Patrol Officer Joaquin Zubieta said Brett M. Sloppy, 28, of San Marcos, was behind the wheel of the truck involved in the crash. Zubieta said alcohol was not a factor in the crash and there were no plans to arrest Sloppy, who the CHP estimates was going 45 to 50 mph at the time of the crash.

Zubieta said state vehicle codes don’t apply because the race was a sanctioned event held with the approval of the federal Bureau of Land Management, which owns the land used for the race.

The BLM issued a statement saying safety was the responsibility of the race organizer, South El Monte-based Mojave Desert Racing. MDR’s permit required racers to travel 15 mph or less when they were within 50 feet of fans, and allowed no more than 300 spectators for the event, the agency said.

Phone and e-mail messages left for MDR were not immediately returned.

Tens of thousands of people were spread out along the 50-mile track, but the site of the crash, a stretch known as the “rockpile,” is one of the most popular areas to gather, witnesses said. Some witnesses said they got within 4 feet of the unmarked track, watching trucks fly over a series of jumps. Several jagged rocks jut from the sand track at the bottom of the hill.

The driver “hit the rock and just lost control and tumbled,” said Matt March, 24, of Wildomar, who was standing next to the jump. It took rescue vehicles and helicopters more than half an hour to reach the remote location, accessible only by a rutted dirt road.

Six people died at the scene and two others died after being taken to a hospital, authorities said.

The race is part of a series held in the Mojave Desert’s Soggy Dry Lake Bed, about an hour’s drive from the nearest city, Lucerne Valley.

There were no barriers at the site of the crash. Fans said these races rarely have safety guards.

“That’s desert racing for you,” said spectator John Payne, 20, of Anaheim. “You’re at your own risk out here. You are in the middle of the desert. People were way too close and they should have known. You can’t really hold anyone at fault. It’s just a horrible, horrible accident.”