Seven months after the accident that killed 18-year-old Jackie
Gamboa, a Morgan Hill man was arrested and charged with alleged
reckless driving resulting in manslaughter.
Morgan Hill – Seven months after the accident that killed 18-year-old Jackie Gamboa, a Morgan Hill man was arrested and charged with alleged reckless driving resulting in manslaughter.
Nathan Schrock, 21, turned himself in to police after a $50,000 warrant was issued for his arrest Thursday morning. He was booked into Santa Clara County Jail after he turned himself in at the San Jose Police Department. He later posted bail and is waiting for his arraignment scheduled for Sept. 19.
“We put a lot of work into this case,” Morgan Hill police Sgt. Mark Brazeal said Thursday. “It was frustrating at times, waiting for toxicology reports, waiting for things to come together … I’m very glad the District Attorney’s office decided to file charges at the felony level.”
The accident took place on Jan. 22, as Gamboa was a passenger in Schrock’s pickup truck. Police said Schrock was driving southbound on Railroad Avenue at approximately 7pm; when he reached Tennant Avenue, he saw the railroad arms down for an oncoming northbound freight train.
Apparently deciding to cross the tracks at another intersection, Schrock and the driver of a truck in front of him both made U-turns and headed north on
Railroad. Police believe he was trying to beat the train to the next intersection north of Tennant, San Pedro Avenue.
But when Schrock and the other driver arrived at San Pedro, the gates were already down, and the driver of the other truck was in front of Schrock.
Witnesses said Schrock seemed impatient and drove around the pickup, then around the railroad arms. The driver of the pickup in front of Schrock told police he yelled for Schrock to stop, seeing a second train, a commuter train, southbound on parallel tracks, coming toward the intersection.
Police said the engineer of the southbound train tried to stop, but the distance was too short, and the train plowed through the pickup Gamboa and Schrock were in, splitting the truck in half and hurling Gamboa from the cab. The bed of the truck flew 150 feet down the rails.
Gamboa was pronounced dead at the scene. Schrock received serious injuries, including trauma to the head and a gash on his thigh. He was flown to Regional Medical Center, where he recovered consciousness the following day.
Brazeal said any case involving a fatality is complicated, and thorough investigations are standard. This case, he said, involved railroad officials as well as law enforcement agencies, and the data collected was extremely technical.
From the perspective of the community, he said, the wait until charges were filed may have seemed unwarranted, but the severity of the case necessitated that investigators left nothing out in the case presented to the District Attorney’s Office.
Brazeal said he hopes that people who hear about the case will have more respect for railroad crossing warnings.
“The lights and crossing arms are there for a reason,” Brazeal said. “It is very rare that they are activated without a train coming through shortly after. There is just not time to safely go around those arms.”
