Latest news from California Highway Patrol
Latest news from California Highway Patrol
California Highway Patrol (CHP) is a special law enforcement agency within California's Department of Motor Vehicles that is responsible for patrolling and fortifying the state's roadways. The agency merged with the California State Police in 1995 after the passage of the State Vehicle Act. The CHP is the largest law enforcement agency in the state and is charged with the task of not only ensuring safety upon California's roadways, but maintaining peace and order in all government buildings and facilities.
The bulk of CHP's time is spent responding to and investigating vehicle crashes and fatalities around the state. CHP faces the difficult task of piecing together traffic accidents that may lead to the arrest of involved individuals for crimes ranging from DUI's to vehicular homicide. Other times, CHP concludes that accidents are truly that- accidents.
This week, like every week, CHP faced a wide variety of complex and devastating crashes around the California roadways. Receiving a high degree of media coverage, CHP responded to a roadway fatality involving an 16-year old driver and his younger twin brothers. The accident took place on Highway 20 and claimed the life of one of the driver's ten-year old twin brothers. The driver and the other twin survived the crash and sustained injuries. Both are expected to recover. CHP is investigating the teen driver's involvement with the crash to determine whether any distractions may have lead to the horrific scene.
In other CHP news, investigators were finally able to identify a body uncovered by CHP inside a locked car on Highway 237 in Sunnyvale. The 47-year old decedent was discovered in a seemingly disabled vehicle on Thursday evening. He was alone in the car and, despite attempts by emergency respondents to revive the man, was pronounced dead at the scene. There was no evidence of a collision or suspicious foul play. CHP is continuing to piece together the facts surrounding the incident.
CHP officers are frequently faced with seemingly unending bouts of tragedy and devastation. Thursday morning, for example, officers in Merced County were faced with the task of responding to two separate vehicle fatalities happening around the same time in completely unrelated locations. The first incident was reported around 7:30am on Thursday and involved an intersection collision claiming the life of a 31-year old woman. The other driver, an 18-year old male, survived the accident. Shortly thereafter, another call came in around 11am and involved a large big rig truck and a Chevrolet Cavalier. A passenger in the sedan was killed instantly when it collided with the truck traveling at 35 mph in the southbound lane of Highway 165. The two other passengers in the car, as well as the truck driver, survived the crash.
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