Mud Bog Truck Drives Into Pecos Crowd, Lawsuit Alleges

A Santa Fe man’s detour during a fishing trip ended badly when his arm was crushed by a truck competing in a mud bog race in Pecos, according to a lawsuit filed this week in state District Court.

Anthony LeRouge says in the suit that one of the mud-racing trucks drove into the crowd during the April 10, 2010, event and hit LeRouge.

He and his wife are seeking damages for medical expenses, loss of income and earning capacity, pain and suffering and other counts.

The lawsuit says the mud bog race was organized by a group called Strictly Mud Bogging, which is named as a defendant along with three San Miguel County men said to run the enterprise. Wanda Varela, identified as the owner of the property where the Pecos event was held, is also listed as a defendant.

Varela had no comment on the suit when reached by phone Thursday. Efforts to reach the other defendants — Anthony Pacheco, George Bustamonte and Antonio Flores — were unsuccessful.

The LeRouge lawsuit contains a description of mud bogging — it’s “a motor sport in which a large ditch is filled with mud and participants drive their vehicles the length of the ditch. Participants attempt to drive through the mud-filled ditch as quickly as possible, and are timed.”

The trucks or other vehicles used in mud-bogging generally have giant tires and big engines.

On the day he was hurt, LeRouge’s lawsuit states, he, his son and a friend were returning from fishing on the Pecos River when his son suggested they stop at the mud bogging event.

They paid admission and LeRouge was offered a chair in the spectator area. The lawsuit says part of the spectator area was protected by concrete jersey barriers, but another part where LeRouge sat was separated from the mud-filled ditch by only “soft-plastic fencing material held up by metal fence stakes.”

LeRouge was watching the proceedings when one of the trucks “came out of the side of the ditch facing toward the spectator area, rather than completing the run and exiting the ditch at the far end.”

“The truck paused briefly, then drove into the crowded, unprotected spectator area,” the suit says.

LeRouge was hit and his arm was crushed. The suit says he sustained “serious and permanent injuries.”

The court complaint maintains the organizers failed to adequately protect the crowd or screen drivers and their trucks, and didn’t warn spectators about the danger of watching from the unprotected area.