On Jan. 25, according to the LAPD, the city truck was backing into an alley behind Burbank Boulevard and Noble Avenue in Sherman Oaks, to empty residential trash cans, when it ran over and killed 35-year-old David Soto-Toral. Joel Grover reports March 2, 2023.
The City of LA has been hit with a $15 million wrongful death claim, filed by the mother of a 35-year-old man who was run over and killed by an LA Sanitation truck; it was the second fatal accident involving an LA garbage truck in two months.
On January 25, according to the LAPD, the city truck was backing into an alley behind Burbank Boulevard and Noble Avenue in Sherman Oaks, to empty residential trash cans, when it ran over and killed 35-year-old David Soto-Toral.
"Mr. Soto-Toral was seated in the middle of the alley, when he was struck and killed... [he] died from blunt head trauma immediately upon being struck," says the wrongful death claim, filed by attorney Robert Brennan on behalf of Sara Toral, David's mother.
"He was a young man touched a lot of lives in a very positive way. He had a circle of friends which was huge," attorney Brennan told NBC4.
Get top local stories in Southern California delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC LA's News Headlines newsletter.
"The day he died, a piece of me died. I cannot explain the pain," Sara Toral told the I-Team after the January accident.
She says her son was a skateboarder so accomplished that he got sponsorships, and was building a career in the entertainment industry.
But she said he struggled with addiction, that began after a series of skateboarding accidents where he was prescribed opioid painkillers.
"It appeared that whenever he’d go on his addiction 'trips,' he wouldn’t want to be around family, so he’d disappear," Toral said.
And that's what appeared to happen around January 25, when he was spotted by a surveillance camera, apparently high, sitting on a sidewalk on Burbank Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.
Hours later, about 11:20am, he was seen sitting in a nearby alley, just minutes before the LAPD says a city garbage truck backed up to empty cans, running over David Soto-Toral.
The LAPD told the I-Team the driver was not impaired, but Toral's attorney Robert Brennan points out there were five cameras on the trash truck to guide the driver.
"He's got 360 cameras on this truck. Whatever happened that led to this accident, he was not paying attention to what was right in his immediate view," Brennan told NBC4.
The claim Brennan filed for Sara Toral asks the city of LA for $15-million for "pain and suffering."
"We don't think that $15 million is out of the ballpark by a long shot," said Brennan.
"What is the value of a human life? This man was very much a part of multiple communities, the entertainment community, the skating community," Brennan added.
Sara Toral wants to have some kind of permanent memorial to her son. A mural painted on a wall in the alley where David was killed was taken down; Toral isn't sure who removed it.
So now, she wants to use some of the money from the city of LA to make improvements to LA skate parks, that gave her son so much joy, and maybe build an indoor skate park.
"I’d like to provide a safe haven for skateboarders, like an indoor skate park that can be open 24 hours a day and maybe have a wellness person therek, that they can talk to," Toral told NBC4.
Her attorney Robert Brennan expects that it will take several months to get a response from the city of LA to the wrongful death claim, and he expects the city will likey deny it. He says the Toral family will file a formal lawsuit against the city.
LA Sanitation told NBC4 it would not comment on pending litigation.
