Rider feels fortunate to survive deadly motorcycle crash in Phoenix

OFF THE WIRE
Rider feels fortunate to survive deadly motorcycle crash in Phoenix by Michael Ferraresi - Mar. 31, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic Photos from the crash scene
The dump truck plowed through the group of motorcycles in such a flash that Jason Anania and the other nine riders had no time to react. The bones in his leg shattered before he hit the concrete beneath his Triumph Bonneville.
He rolled over and saw the truck catch fire. People scrambled to move him away from the wreckage at Carefree Highway and 27th Avenue, setting him safely on his side - unknowingly - face to face with a wounded friend who later died.
"It was an instant that never ended," Anania said of Thursday's collision, which left four motorcyclists dead and two others with serious injuries.
"In that instant, your mind is racing," he said. "But I knew it affected everyone, even though there was only one sound, one vision."
Phoenix police vehicular-crimes detectives are still investigating the cause of the collision in which the dump truck rear-ended the motorcyclists as they were stopped at a red light. Early reports said there were nine motorcyclists.
Victims' family members and fellow riders from Phoenix M.C. Kruzers are planning memorial services this week, including a Thursday candlelight vigil at the crash site, where the collision ended the group's sunny afternoon run to Bartlett Lake.
Anania, 35, is recovering at his north Phoenix apartment with his five pet birds. He is coping with amnesia brought on by head injuries he suffered in a collision in May that left him in a coma for weeks.
Anania, an operating room nurse who works with trauma patients at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center, asked to be airlifted after the accident to his workplace. Doctors released him earlier this week with a heavily bandaged right leg - an injury he said made him feel fortunate to survive.
"I'm not saying helmets would have saved them, but if I wasn't wearing one, I'd be dead," said Anania, who moved to the Valley from Iowa partly so he could ride a motorcycle year-round.
Three motorcyclists were killed at the scene: Clyde R. Nachand, 67; Stephen Punch, 52; and Daniel L. Butler, 35.
Dayle Veronica Downs-Totonchi, 47, died Friday after doctors determined she could no longer breathe on her own and was no longer registering brain activity, said her husband, Paul Totonchi.
"It doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever," said Totonchi, a longtime biker who founded M.C. Kruzers in May.
"I've sat down and tried to analyze it, not in the sense that I just lost someone, but just in the sense of how it's possible," he said. "How do you go through 10 bikes and three (vehicles) and not stop?"
The dump-truck driver, Michael J. Jakscht, 46, struck the motorcycles two weeks after he was cited by Scottsdale police for failing to control his speed to avoid a collision at Shea Boulevard and Hayden Road. The police accident report detailed how Jakscht struck a stopped vehicle in a pickup truck registered in his name.
Blue Sky Sanitation, the company whose truck Jakscht was driving, declined comment for this article.
John Fox, 50, who founded Phoenix Motorcycle Riders Group - a larger group from which the victims' group was born - said he hoped the tragedy would increase awareness about motorcycle safety as police weigh criminal charges against the driver.
"He was going to kill someone at that intersection," Fox said.
"The fact that they were bikes makes for an ugly story because there were bodies and bikes on the street rather than bodies trapped in a neat metal compartment in a car."
Two of the 10 motorcyclists, including off-duty Phoenix Fire Capt. Ernie Lizarraga, 52, remained in the hospital Tuesday. Lizarraga's condition had improved though he is still considered serious, a fire department spokesman said.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2010/03/31/20100331phoenix-motorcycle-crash-survivor.html