LOS ANGELES _ A terrorist attack involving a large truck _ similar to the assault that killed at least 77 in Nice, France, Thursday _ has been a scenario law enforcement officials in California and beyond have long analyzed.
Police have focused mostly on the possibility of terrorists packing a truck with explosives and detonating it in a crowded area.
Brian Jenkins, a counterterrorism expert and senior adviser to the president of Rand Corp., said the danger of truck bombs has existed since the 1980s with attacks in Lebanon but have evolved over time.
"The use of trucks as a weapon (in of themselves) is a more recent scenario. Al-Qaida and ISIS have both exhorted their followers to use any means to bring death. With limited access to explosives, large vehicles into large crowds are an obvious event," he said.
In March 2006, former University of North Carolina student Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar was accused of plowing a sports utility vehicle into nine pedestrians on the busy campus square to "avenge the deaths of Muslims" around the world, according to Los Angeles Times reports at the time. Several people were hurt but no one was killed.
In 2013, a man deliberately drove his car into pedestrians on the Venice boardwalk in Los Angeles, killing an Italian newlywed and injuring 17 others.
Nathan Louis Campbell was found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Alice Gruppioni, an Italian tourist visiting California with her husband on their honeymoon. Campbell also was found guilty on several counts of assault with a deadly weapon and hit-and-run charges.
Upset after a botched effort to buy drugs, Campbell got into his Dodge Avenger and decided to jump a curb, maneuver past barriers meant to block vehicle access and plow through the packed boardwalk, authorities alleged.
Since Timothy McVeigh used a Ryder rental truck packed with ammonia nitrate to attack a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, counterterrorism officials have run a terror scenario with trucks at downtown L.A., Los Angeles International Airport and the Port of Los Angeles.
"Trucks have been on the radar screen since Oklahoma City and even before with first World Trade Center attack in 1993," said Brian Levin, a counterterrorism expert at California State University, San Bernardino. "Authorities were mostly concerned that a truck would be a bed for explosives and not so much running over people."
Levin, however, added that Israel has seen cases of terrorists using trucks to run over people.
A decade ago, the Los Angeles Police Department discussed a terrorism scenario in which a fuel truck would be used in an attack.
Jenkins said a typical fuel tanker carries at least 9,000 gallons of gasoline, and they make up 90 percent of hazardous materials on our roads. He said during a study for Manetta Transportation Institute, he found these to be most deadly threat among dangerous cargoes.
"Large vehicles and trucks have always been a concern especially from the standpoint of vehicle bombs," said Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Horace Frank, a veteran counterterrorism specialist.
Frank noted the case in 2003 in which an elderly man accidentally plowed his car into a crowd at the Santa Monica Farmer's Market, killing 10 people. That case showed how a "vehicle can be deadly in a crowd," he said.
