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Sucks how a ride out with your friends can end up with multiple people dead. RIP to those riders. Hope their families and friends are hanging in there in this rough time.<br />
<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40174584/ns/us_news-life/" target="_blank">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40174584/ns/us_news-life/</a><br />
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OCOTILLO, Calif. — Five people were killed Saturday in a head-on crash involving seven motorcycles and two passenger cars on a rural road near Ocotillo, 80 miles east of San Diego, the California Highway Patrol said.<br />
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<b>The driver of the car believed to have caused the crash got away unscathed, officials said.</b><br />
CHP officer Deeann Goudie, the first emergency responder on the scene, called the crash "one of the most traumatic I've seen" in 23 years with the CHP.<br />
Besides the fatalities, five people were injured, Goudie said. Four with serious injuries were airlifted out by two helicopters to trauma centers in San Diego, she said.<br />
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<b>The crash apparently was caused by an impatient driver of a gold Honda Civic</b>, Goudie said.<br />
She described the 1 p.m. accident:<br />
Twelve motorcycles in a group were eastbound on lightly traveled, two-lane Highway 98, which runs parallel with the U.S.-Mexico border and has a 65 mph speed limit.<br />
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The Civic driver came up behind the motorcyclists and made an unsafe pass. The westbound driver of a white Dodge Avenger, facing the Honda, took evasive action and swerved right into the path of the oncoming motorcycles.<br />
A female Avenger passenger died when a motorcyclist went right through the front passenger door of the car, Goudie said. The Avenger driver was among those airlifted to a hospital.<br />
Identities of the fatalities were not released pending notification of family, she said.<br />
Imperial County fire Captain Peter Stanton told the San Diego Union-Tribune that two men and two women on motorcycles were the other fatalities.<br />
Authorities are searching for the Honda Civic, estimated to be a 1995-2000 model, driven by a man wearing a baseball cap.<br />
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Goudie said the Civic driver may face charges depending on the outcome of the crash investigation.<br />
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Goudie said besides the CHP, the U.S. Border Patrol, the Bureau of Land Management, the local sheriff's office and fire department responded to the scene.<br />
She advise drivers to be patient and not to pass in unsafe ways.
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Sorry for the repost, guess I should have looked in all sections first before posting.<br />
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Another update, <a href="http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/nov/14/lakeside-motorcycle-club-president-recalls-horror/" target="_blank">http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2...ecalls-horror/</a><br />
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UPDATE: Saddletramps motorcycle club president Carl Smith visited his injured friends at the hospital Sunday and said, "I'm pretty sure they're going to make it, but they're in pretty bad shape. They're all in intensive care."<br />
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He also identified the four dead riders as Lance and Amy Heath of Alpine, Bill Miller of Ramona and Tonya Trayer of El Cajon. The Heaths are survived by two young boys and Miller is survived by a wife, daughters and grandchildren, Smith said.<br />
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He said Trayer's husband of 15 years, Wilson, is hospitalized with a broken jaw, a broken hip, a broken pelvis, a broken leg and internal bleeding. Smith said the surgeon that operated on Wilson Trayer said it would be a long recovery. The couple have three children.<br />
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Smith said the injuries his surviving friends sustained -- when a car avoiding a head-on collision with another car swerved onto the shoulder of the desert highway Route 98, then into the middle of the club's motorcycle caravan Saturday -- are extensive.<br />
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He said William Barnes is hospitalized with a punctured lung, a broken hip, a broken ankle and an injured arm; his wife, Melanie Barnes, is hospitalized with a broken pelvis, brain hemorrhaging and internal bleeding, and Kelly Halley is recovering after having her spleen removed Saturday.<br />
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"There was a lot of devastation," Smith said.<br />
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Smith said he couldn't say how Saturday's tragedy going forward would affect the group, which frequently raises money for community organizations, in part through toy drives at Christmas time.<br />
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"It depends on how soon we can put closure to all this, get everybody healthy," he said. "We're a very tight-knit bunch. We participate in activities way beyond the motorcycles. We're family-oriented. We were all one big family. We take care of our own. We will continue to do that."<br />
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ORIGINAL: When tragedy struck the Saddletramp motorcycle club Saturday afternoon, Carl Smith was at the front of a pack of 21 riders heading to Winterhaven near the Arizona border to celebrate the club's 10-year anniversary.<br />
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Then a car tried to pass all 12 motorcycles and another, oncoming car swerved out of control, onto a sandy shoulder of the desert highway Route 98 and back into the middle of the pack of motorcyclists. Four riders would die. Four others remained at a San Diego hospital Sunday morning.<br />
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"There were two or three other bikes behind me that narrowly missed it, and then the carnage started from there," Smith said Sunday. "We were going east and the car was going west and the combined speed was 120 mph."<br />
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"The oncoming car, the one you seen on TV, panicked, hit his brakes, lost control and went into the middle of the pack like a bowling ball," said Smith, the club's president.<br />
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The accident happened at about 1 p.m. seven miles east of Ocotillo. Authorities are looking for the driver of the eastbound gold Honda Civic, which did not stop. They arrested the driver of the westbound Dodge Avenger that collided with the motorcyclists on suspicion of driving under the influence after smelling alcohol on his breath, California Highway Patrol Officer DeeAnn Goudie said.<br />
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The sedan driver, identified by Carlos Ramirez Bobadilla, 36, of Mexicali, Mexico, suffered major injuries and his female passenger was killed. She was not immediately identified. Both were from Mexico.<br />
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Goudie said Ramirez is at UCSD with a fractured foot, a fractured hand and a scalp laceration and underwent surgery Saturday night. She said he was arrested by San Diego police at the hospital.<br />
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Two male and two female motorcyclists were dead before paramedics got there, said Capt. Peter Stanton of the Imperial County Fire Department. Five others were injured, one critically.<br />
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A husband and wife riding on one motorcycle were among those killed, as was the wife of another rider who was badly injured, Goudie said.<br />
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She identified the injured riders as Wilson Trayer, 39, of Lakeside; Kelly Halley, 42, of Santee; William Barnes, 57, of San Diego; and Melanie Barnes, 46, of San Diego. She said another motorcyclist, John Lombardo, 55, of Lakeside, was treated briefly at the El Centro Regional Medical Center with minor injuries.<br />
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The Barneses are married and were riding the same motorcycle, Goudie said. Melanie Barnes has a pelvic fracture and William Barnes has a hip fracture, she said. Goudie didn't know the extent of Trayer's or Halley's injuries. She said Halley was riding alone and Trayer was riding with his wife, who was killed.<br />
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Riders told Goudie the driver of the gold car, a man wearing a baseball cap, appeared to be traveling alone. She said she is hoping to get leads about his whereabouts from cameras along his route, which could have involved a border crossing into Mexico.<br />
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Smith said the speed limit of the stretch of road where the crash occurred is 65 mph.<br />
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The remote location of the accident meant that it took some time for rescue personnel to arrive. That left riders frantically trying to save the lives of the friends they could.<br />
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"It took 45 minutes for anybody to get out there," Smith said. "A half hour anyway. It seemed like an eternity. I was giving CPR to one that still had a chance to no avail. There were some that were dismembered that there was no hope for."<br />
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Goudie said the 911 call from the accident scene came in at 12:55 p.m. and she arrived there from 30 miles away at 1:13 p.m.<br />
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The Saddletramps club formed 10 years ago to give friends a chance to ride and help their community.<br />
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It was "pretty much just a group of guys that rode together and formed to support the hometown of Lakeside." Now there are about 20 members from around the county. They hail from Alpine, like Smith, and from El Cajon. They hold fundraisers for the Lakeside Boys and Girls Club, the Lakeside Community Health Center and the non-gaming Indian reservations. "They weren't getting any help," Smith explained. "Some of the non-gaming Indian reservations are some of the poorest people in the state."<br />
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Laurie Najor, an employee at the Live Oak Springs Resort in Boulevard said she knew club members from a series of Biketober celebrations they held in recent years. She said the group was charitable and kind.<br />
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Smith, 52 and a motorcyclist for 35 years, declined to say which club members were killed because some family members have yet to be notified. He said the club came home rather than continue eastward.<br />
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"I'm on my way to the hospital," he said.
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