Sylmar cop killed in solo-crash on 101 Freeway in Sherman Oaks

An off-duty Los Angeles police officer was thrown out of his pickup truck in an early-morning crash on the Ventura (101) Freeway on Saturday and died two hours later at a Westwood hospital.

Jose Diance-Cruz, 23, of Sylmar died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center at 5:34 a.m., two hours after the wreck on the eastbound freeway at Van Nuys Boulevard, according to the coroner's office.

About 1:15 p.m. a motorcade of 10 LAPD units with lights and sirens activated transported his body from the hospital to the coroner's office.

According to Los Angeles police officer Gregory Baek, the fallen officer worked at the LAPD's Southwest Station.

Diance-Cruz was found gravely injured and still belted into the driver's seat, which had been pushed out of the vehicle by part of a guardrail that the pickup hit at the Van Nuys Boulevard offramp at 3:21 a.m., said LAPD Sgt. Carl Taylor.

A California Highway Patrol statement said he "drifted off the main travel portion of the roadway'' and into a metal guardrail at the exit.

"The guardrail penetrated the interior of the pickup,'' the CHP officer said, pushing both the driver's seat and its occupant out the rear window.

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