Man Inflating Truck Tire Dies When It Explodes

LAGUNA HILLS —  A Garden Grove man died Monday when a tire exploded while he was trying to inflate it.

The accident happened about 8:30 a.m. at a tire shop near Laguna Hills Mall, where Abdel Murad, 35, had stopped during his work shift to fix a flat tire on a milk truck. The truck has split-rim wheels instead of the one-piece rims in most vehicles, according to investigators.

“The people at the tire shop told him they weren’t equipped to deal with split-rims, but we were told that he decided to inflate the tires anyway,” said Rick Rice, spokesman for Cal/OSHA, which is investigating the case. The explosion caused the rim of the wheel to hurtle into Murad’s head, Deputy Coroner Bryan Mitchell said. Murad died at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center.

Investigators don’t know why the tire exploded, but said that this type of an explosion is not likely to occur in the vehicles with one-piece rims. The milk truck driven by Murad had rims generally used in large commercial trucks, according to investigators.