Three people were killed early Thursday in a wrong-way head-on crash on the westbound 91 Freeway in Riverside, and the wreck closed all lanes near 14th Street for hours before traffic reopened in time for the morning commute.
CHP officers responded about 2 a.m. to a report of a driver heading east on the westbound 91 Freeway near 14th Street. By 4:30 a.m., all lanes were shut down. They did not reopen until 8:39 a.m., a long enough closure to turn a deadly crash into a morning traffic problem as well.
The California Highway Patrol said a driver had pulled into the wrong lane of the freeway. A Riverside County spokesperson said that wrong-way driver slammed into a big rig, and a third vehicle was involved. Officers found a white SUV on its side, the big rig leaking fluid and a damaged black sedan. ABC7 identified the sedan as a BMV and reported that one additional person was taken to a local hospital in unknown condition.
What remains unanswered is the part that matters most to drivers and investigators alike: why the vehicle ended up traveling the wrong way in the first place. The incident log says one vehicle was swerving between cars while moving through the second and third lanes, but it does not say who was driving it or what led to the deadly turn. For now, the facts are plain. Three people are dead, one more is hospitalized, and a stretch of the westbound 91 Freeway that should have been moving before dawn was instead sealed off by a crash that no one on scene could yet fully explain.
