Accident kills promoter at Wis. monster truck show

[January 27, 2009]  MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- A monster truck show promoter fatally injured during a show was a close friend of the veteran driver whose huge truck accidentally ran him down, officials said Monday.

A spokesman said that for the devastated driver it was "like losing a brother."

George Eisenhart Jr. stepped into the path of a truck driven by Daniel Patrick during the Saturday night show at the Dane County Coliseum in Madison. Eisenhart later died of his injuries, which occurred as Patrick returned his truck to a parking area.

It was the nation's second fatal accident at a monster truck show in a little over a week.

Amateur video broadcast on television showed a man walking in front of the truck. The show was immediately halted.

"Our preliminary investigation shows neither Eisenhart nor the truck driver saw each other before the collision," Coroner John Stanley said at a news conference Sunday.

Patrick spoke to investigators and authorities said he would not be charged. Sheriff Dave Mahoney said it appeared all safety precautions had been taken and called the death "a very tragic accident."

"He knew he had hit something but obviously, he didn't know it was a person. ... He is taking this very hard," Mahoney said.

Eisenhart, 41, of Chardon, Ohio, was owner and president of Ohio-based Image Productions, which has been staging monster truck shows across the nation for more than 15 years.

In December, he became president of the Monster Truck Racing Association, an industry group. And Patrick, a veteran of the monster truck circuit, is the group's technical director, and instrumental in truck design and construction, said Rich Schaefer, communications director for the association.

"You'd be hard-pressed to find two guys that are equally as focused on safety as those two," Schaefer said. "That's what makes this situation so much more painful."

Patrick is devastated by the accident, Schaefer said, because he and Eisenhart were "very, very close friends." The two often spent four or five days per week together during tours in the winter, he said.

"This was like losing a brother. He was family," Schaefer said.

A call to Patrick's home in Circleville, Ohio, on Monday was answered by a woman who said her husband had no comment.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration also was looking into the death. Kim Stille, director of OSHA's Madison office, said Monday that the investigation was continuing but no obvious safety issues had turned up. She agreed it appeared to be an accident.

Eisenhart had spoken proudly of the show's safety record the day before the accident, telling WKOW in Madison: "This is our 16th year, and I wish I had a big piece of wood to knock on right now, but we have not had an incident besides a gal slipping in the aisle at another location."

On Jan. 16, a 6-year-old boy was killed in a Monster Jam event in Tacoma, Wash. Sebastian Hizey was struck on the head by a chunk of metal that flew off a truck doing doughnuts. One man in the audience was seriously injured.

Ross Bonar, who has covered the industry for years at TheMonsterBlog.com, said the two accidents were an aberration in the industry's 30-year history. And he said Eisenhart was one of its safety leaders.

"George's company was no doubt one of the top ones out there when it came to professionalism and when it came to concern for safety of spectators and participants," he said. "The whole industry is shaken up by losing George," he said.

[Associated Press; By RYAN J. FOLEY]

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