MORGAN HILL
– Between a fatal motorcycle wreck and a 12-hour backup for an
overturned tanker truck, U.S. Highway 101 was a mess this Fourth of
July.
By PETER CROWLEY and CAROL HOLZGRAFE
Staff Writers
MORGAN HILL – Between a fatal motorcycle wreck and a 12-hour backup for an overturned tanker truck, U.S. Highway 101 was a mess this Fourth of July.
Eldred Jenkins, 43, of San Martin, died while riding a 1993 Harley-Davidson motorcycle at 7 p.m. Sunday night on the northbound San Martin Avenue offramp from U.S. 101. His tire slipped on a diesel fuel spill and he lost control, was thrown from the bike and died from his injuries, the California Highway Patrol reported.
This was one of 30 wrecks – 14 with injuries – the CHP responded to in the Hollister-Gilroy patrol area between 3 p.m. Friday and 4:45 p.m. Monday. Gilroy firefighter/paramedics responded to four more.
The lengthy backup started at 3:28 a.m. Sunday when a 1996 Freightliner tanker truck pulling a trailer, both filled with gasoline, overturned in the southbound lane of U.S. 101 just north of the Burnett Avenue overpass, north of Morgan Hill.
When the truck was removed at about 2:30 p.m., the southbound backup reached past the Highway 85 onramp to U.S. 101, a distance of more than 12 miles.
CHP officer Brad Voyles said truck driver Bhupinder Singh, 34, of Modesto, made an unsafe turning movement and flipped the truck over onto the right shoulder. No citations were issued.
The CHP’s holiday enforcement period ended at midnight today, but that wasn’t the end of the wrecks.
At 6:25 this morning, CHP officers responded to a major-injury collision between a Volvo and two big rigs on a two-lane stretch of Pacheco Pass Highway near Lovers Lane. A Los Banos woman, whose name was not released as of press time, was westbound when she fell asleep at the wheel, according to CHP officer Terry Mayes. Her car crossed the center line into the path of the eastbound trucks: a car carrier and a Costco Wholesale freighter.
“She sideswiped the car carrier and then came off of it and took the Costco big rig behind it head-on,” Mayes said.
The pass was too foggy for a CALSTAR helicopter to land, Mayes said, so an ambulance took the woman to Saint Louise Regional Hospital in Gilroy. From there, the air ambulance flew her to a San Jose trauma center.
