CALTRANS CONTRACTOR KILLED IN COLLISION.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

A Caltrans contractor who was helping change a tire on the center median of the Golden State Freeway died from injuries suffered in a chain-reaction accident, officials said Friday.

Enrique Martinez, 51, of Montebello died at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital just before 10 p.m. Thursday, said Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Scott Carrier.

Martinez was the owner and president of E.M. Oil Transport, a Pico Rivera-based company hired by the state Department of Transportation to perform road resurfacing on the right shoulder and center median of the Golden State Freeway, said Officer Vicki Callier of the California Highway Patrol.

The four-vehicle crash occurred on the northbound side of the freeway, a few miles north of Templin Highway, about 1:20 p.m. Thursday, Callier said.

Nobody has been cited or arrested in the deadly collision.

Gustavo Soto, 45, of Bell Gardens was driving a double tanker truck that made a sudden lane change in front of a 1994 Isuzu Trooper, officials said.

Callier said the Trooper, driven by Phillip Cowan, 18, of Frazier Park veered from the left lane into the center median to avoid the truck. As Cowan braked, his car skidded on the dirt median and slammed into the truck where Martinez and Miguel Torrez, 30, of Norwalk were helping change a flat tire on a disabled big rig driven by a fifth person.

Both the big rig driven by Soto, and the one with the flat tire, were working on the Caltrans job, Callier said. Soto works for Gardena-based Southwest Trails, and he was hauling a 24-ton load of emulsified asphalt that's used as a sealer in road resurfacing.

Crews have been applying a slurry seal along the median and shoulder of the freeway as a weather-proofing measure for the coming winter storm season, said Caltrans spokesman Vincent Moreno.

The road work has been taking place on the Golden State Freeway between the Antelope Valley Freeway and the Kern County line. ``They apply that slurry seal to the center median asphalt and the right shoulder asphalt, to protect against the inclement weather and the snow at those higher elevations,'' Moreno said.

When it rains, the water drains from the traffic lanes onto the shoulder and median, and snowplows clear the snow off the roadway. ``Those shoulder areas get degraded because of that ice sitting there,'' Moreno said.

Caltrans crews perform road resurfacing as weather and road conditions dictate, he noted.

Callier said Martinez was standing on the pavement and Torrez was standing in the bed of their pickup truck when the Trooper struck them. Cowan, Torrez and Soto weren't seriously hurt, she said.

Soto was going to refill the other truck's tank with the substance used in the slurry seal work. Callier said he drove across all four northbound lanes upon spotting the other truck parked in the center median, and cut off the 70 mph Trooper in the process.

``(Cowan) swerved off to the left to avoid rear-ending (Soto's) big rig, and as he did so, he went into the center median,'' Callier said. ``He slid into the back of the pickup truck but, unfortunately, Martinez was standing back there.''