CLOSE CALL

Giant Falling Boulder Obliterates Car—and Driver Just Barely Escapes

“I’m a little traumatized by this whole ordeal,” the driver said after his brush with death on a Malibu road.

A man in California was nearly crushed to death this week by an enormous boulder that plunged off a Malibu hillside and smashed his car just moments after he got out. “The rock is the size of the whole hood,” Mauricio Henao told KTLA 5 of his brush with death. Photos of the wrecked car show the enormous rock landed right on top of the car, where Henao said he’d been sitting until he got out to answer a phone call. “I was in the driver’s seat, walked out, got a call, ran back inside, came out, and the car was just totaled,” he was quoted as saying, adding that he’s “a little traumatized by this whole ordeal.” The debris spread across four lanes of traffic and another car was also damaged in the rockslide, though no one was hurt.