Dear Lord: 8 dead at off-road race after vehicle crashes into spectators

Eight spectators are dead and twelve more were injured after an off-road vehicle plowed into the crowd during the California 200, a series of races held in Soggy Dry Lake bed, which is 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert.
Via msnbc:

“There was dust everywhere, people screaming, people running,” David Conklin, a photographer covering the event for off-road magazines, told The Associated Press.

Conklin said the Prerunner truck was among the first 20 off the line in the race, and had just gone over a jump known as “the rockpile” about two miles into the race.

The reason for the crash is currently unknown.The driver of the truck was uninjured, but was forced to make a hasty retreat from the scene after “the crowd grew unruly and some began throwing rocks at him.”
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES AFTER THE JUMP

More from the eyewitness account of the carnage from photographer David Conklin:

He said he watched the vehicle sail through the air. Then he turned to watch for other cars when he heard the commotion caused by the crash.

“When I got up to the vehicle I could tell that several people were trapped. There were just bodies everywhere.”
Conklin said he “saw one woman with a major head wound lying in a pool of blood. Someone else was crushed beneath the car.”
The truck came to a rest upside down with its oversized wheels pointing toward the sky.

Obviously, at this point, no one can say how or even if this terrible tragedy could have been somehow avoided, but Jeff Talbott, inland division chief for the California Highway Patrol, observed that “[t]here were no barriers at all” between spectators and the route the race took.
Mercy. Our thoughts go out to the families and friends of those killed as well as to those who were injured.
***
8 dead, dozen hurt as off-road race car plows into crowd [msnbc]