Bakersfield-based civil attorney Daniel Rodriguez stood before a jury Monday and tried to take them to the moment when everything changed for a local family, when, in a nanosecond, a domestic scene of peaceful bliss became a hellish race for survival.
“The sky turned orange, the windows shattered, the air was sucked out of the room making it hard to breathe,” Rodriguez told the jury, his own voice taking on the sound of someone struggling for air.
Just seconds before, the scene had included a new mother, a grandmother and a 17-day-old baby boy in the kitchen of the family’s new dream home in rural south Bakersfield.
It was about 3:30 pm, Nov. 13, 2015 when a massive explosion shattered the serenity of their lives. The heat was fast becoming unbearable. It soon became clear, if they stayed in the house, they would die.
“Mom, we gotta get out,” the veteran attorney choked out as he placed himself in the shoes of the new mother, one of his clients, on that afternoon.
Gloria Ruckman gathered her then-infant son, Robert Elias Ruckman, wrapped a jacket around him, pressed him against her chest and headed toward the door, followed by her mother, the boy’s grandmother, Amalia Leal.
“The door swings open, the trees are on fire,” Rodriguez told the jurors.
It’s so hot, the cars were melting in the driveway. The roar of the natural gas-fueled fire sounded like a jet engine. But the three somehow made it out.
As they ran across Wible Road, Leal could see the back of her daughter’s clothes being eaten away by the intense heat, exposing blisters — and steam — rising from her burned skin.
Both women would spend weeks in a local burn unit, undergoing painful washing and scraping of their
