92-Year-Old’s Car Backs Into Bank, Killing Boy, 1

A car driven by a 92-year-old man plowed backward through the glass windows of a Bank of America building in Sylmar on Tuesday, killing a 1-year-old boy and injuring three people, authorities said.

Capt. Greg Meyer of the Los Angeles Police Department said the elderly motorist had left the bank, in the 12600 block of Glenoaks Boulevard, shortly before 11:30 a.m. and gotten into his station wagon, which was parked in a handicapped spot near the bank’s rear entrance.

The driver put the car in reverse to pull out, but lost control and crashed through a set of 10-foot-high glass windows, striking a group of people sitting on a couch, police said.

Authorities said the man may have confused the accelerator with the brake, but it was not known whether his age played a role in the crash.

The 1-year-old, Nathaniel Escodero, was pronounced dead on arrival at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. The boy’s 62-year-old grandmother, along with a 70-year-old man and a 56-year-old man, suffered minor injuries.

Ten to 15 people were in the bank when the car came roaring through the building, witnesses said.

“The first thing I did was get out of the way,” said Ray Moreno, who was standing in a teller’s line. “I saw the car coming and it didn’t stop until it hit the back wall. There were people screaming and running.”

The driver appeared disoriented, said Los Angeles Fire Department Battalion Chief Tony Varela. The motorist was treated for a heart condition.

Varela said a crisis team was dispatched to the scene to help the survivors deal with the trauma.

Meyer said he did not know whether the driver would face criminal charges.

Drivers 85 and older are more than 2.2 times as likely to cause a fatal accident as average-age drivers, said California Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Evan Nossoff.

The statistics are even more dramatic when adjusted for a driver’s yearly mileage. The 85-plus group drives an average of 2,800 miles per year, while the average for all drivers in California is 11,300 a year, Nossoff said. “When you figure in the mileage, the 85-plus drivers are 10 times more likely to be at fault in a fatal,” he said.

The state Assembly passed a driver safety bill Tuesday that was originally aimed at seniors. The version that was passed makes no mention of age and allows the state Department of Motor Vehicles to require increased testing only when notified of a driver’s possible physical impairment by a physician, police officer or family member.

But as written last year by Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), the bill would have required drivers 75 and older to take more frequent driving tests. Drivers 90 and older would have had to take the tests annually.

The original bill passed the state Senate, but stalled in the Assembly because of objections from senior groups headed by AARP, formerly the American Assn. of Retired Persons.