Motorists’ Roadside Scuffle Ends in Death

A South Gate man, apparently angered that he was cut off in traffic, was killed when he confronted another motorist on a busy street and fell into the path of an oncoming car, police said.

Roberto Garcia Scheffini, 51, was struck in the 9600 block of Firestone Boulevard in Downey after he started a fight with another driver, witnesses and police said.

Scheffini, a former cook and bartender, was driving west on Firestone when he was cut off in traffic, became enraged and forced the other driver to the side of the six-lane road, said Downey Police Sgt. Pat O’Brien.

Scheffini and the other driver got into a shoving match and Scheffini fell onto the pavement in the path of a westbound car, O’Brien said.

Scheffini’s family rejects that chronology. Relatives described Scheffini as a peace-loving father of two grown children who had worked as a cook and bartender at the Commerce Club casino before leaving recently because of heart trouble.

Witnesses, however, told investigators that Scheffini was the aggressor, O’Brien said.

O’Brien declined to identify the driver who scuffled with Scheffini or the driver of the car that struck him. No arrests have been made and the case is still under investigation, he added.

Two witnesses who work at a car dealership near the accident site and asked not to be identified said that they saw Scheffini get out of his car and slap the driver of the other car. When the other motorist made a move to strike back, Scheffini stumbled while trying to avoid being hit, fell and was struck by the passing car, the witnesses said.

According to the witnesses, both the motorist who fought with Scheffini and the driver of the car that struck him came to his aid after the accident.

O’Brien said Scheffini was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he died of his injuries.

Scheffini’s wife of 32 years, Celia, and his son, Giovanni, 19, said he was not an angry man and would never provoke a fight.

“If somebody picked a fight he would defend himself but he was not looking for trouble,” Giovanni said at their South Gate home.

Celia Scheffini, a nurse, said she believes the other motorist may have hit her husband in the head with a heavy object, knocking him into the path of the car. She said she did not see the fight but saw her husband’s body and noticed a cut on his head that she thinks was caused by a blow and not by the impact of the car.

“He didn’t deserve to die like that,” she said.