An “extremely lucky” baby thrown from a truck during a collision Thursday in Santa Maria escaped with only minor scratches to her right hand, police said.

In addition to the 14-month-old girl, who was in her mother’s arms breast feeding in the front passenger seat at the time of the collision, three adults were injured in the crash.

The driver of the truck the baby was in, Hemenegildo Navarro Ramirez, was issued a notice to appear in court on suspicion of being an unlicensed driver and failing to secure a child in a child-safety seat.

Public safety officials said that the baby only suffering scratches after being ejected from the truck was exceptionally fortunate, and they stressed the importance of babies and children being properly strapped into safety seats

The child could have been run over, or been killed in the impact from the collision, said police Lt. Rico Flores.

“Anything could have happened,” he said. “But in this case the baby was extremely lucky.”

Police did not release the name of the girl.

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Ramirez, 23, was driving a 1996 Toyota T-100 pickup westbound on Main Street shortly before 5:30 a.m. Thursday, according to police.

Rosalina Ramirez, 21, was breast feeding the baby in the front passenger seat of the truck, police said. The Ramirezes, from Santa Maria, are married and are parents of the child.

Judy Ontiveros Lyghts, 46, of Santa Maria, was driving a blue 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe southbound on Broadway.

The vehicles collided in the intersection. Both drivers claimed to have had a green traffic signal, police said.

The Tahoe stopped in the intersection, and the Toyota rolled onto its roof and came to rest along the south curb in the 100 block of West Main Street.

Both vehicles had major damage.

Rosalina Ramirez was knocked unconscious by the impact, and the infant on her lap was ejected from the truck, police said.

Hemenegildo Ramirez suffered a small laceration to his right ear, Rosalina Ramirez suffered a bruised lung and a fractured right leg, and Lyghts suffered an abrasion to her left elbow and complained of pain in her neck and left arm.

All four people involved in the collision were taken to Marian Medical Center for observation. The adults, at least, were no longer at the hospital Thursday evening.

The collision remained under investigation.

Anyone with information on the crash is encouraged to contact the police Traffic Bureau at 928-3781.

Capt. Eli Iskow with the Santa Barbara County Fire Department said he has seen babies in car seats come out of serious vehicle crashes almost unscathed.

“Seats do an amazing job of minimizing injury,” he said.

“There’s a myth that babies do OK (in crashes) because they’re soft and rubbery. That is not true,” Iskow said.

He said that babies tend to break fewer bones than adults, because their bones aren’t as solid as adults, but they can suffer ruptured organs in vehicle crashes.

Tammy Hudgins, a nurse in the nursery at Marian Medical Center and a member of the Child Passenger Safety Coalition in Santa Barbara County, said that a child safety seat should be properly placed in the vehicle and appropriate for the age and weight of the child.

It is best to keep a child in a backward-facing car seat past his or her first year, and up until about age 4, Hudgins said.

A child should be in the back seat of a vehicle, she said, unless there is no back seat. Front-seat airbags are not safe for rear-facing riders, Hudgins said.

The safest place in the vehicle is the middle of the back seat, she said.

“The best car seat is one that’s used correctly,” Hudgins said, adding that car seats are often misused.

She encouraged car seat users to read the instructions for the seat as well as the manual for the vehicle.

Samantha Yale can be reached at: 739-2159 or syale@santamariatimes.com.

September 19, 2008