CHP: Windsor wrong-way Highway 101 driver crashes, flees

A wrong-way driver on Highway 101 in Windsor disappeared into the night after she sideswiped vehicles, crashed and generated 911 calls from terrified drivers reporting her reckless antics, the CHP said Tuesday.

Witnesses reported the woman had been swerving back and forth across highway lanes, speeding and braking and flashing gang signs, CHP Officer Jon Sloat said.

She’d initially been going the right way but after one crash the driver turned the wrong way back onto the highway and headed south into oncoming traffic. She sideswiped two vehicles before crashing into a fence.

The woman ran from her vehicle, a 1994 Jeep Cherokee, jumped the fence and eluded searchers. She remained at large Tuesday.

In her wake were three damaged vehicles and shaken drivers and passengers - but no serious injuries.

“Man I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. That woman was trying to kill people. It was very bizarre,” said Ryan Hobbs, whose wife, Elaine, called 911 and gave a harrowing play-by-play of the driver’s actions.

The Ukiah couple had been in Sonoma County on Monday getting errands done and were headed home at about 8:30 p.m. when the driver sped by them on the highway near central Windsor.

Ryan Hobbs, who’d been driving in the slow lane, said they first noticed the Jeep when it pulled closely behind a driver in the fast lane.

“She gets right up, not 2 feet from his bumper,” he said. Then she swerved, hit her brakes and moved behind their truck. “She barely misses our back bumper and then passes all of us.”

The driving got worse, said Hobbs, who was listed as a witness in CHP reports. “She was going all over the freeway, across both lanes and into the grass and swerving back over and swerving back over.”

He asked his wife to call 911, believing the driver must be drunk.

Witnesses told the CHP the woman sped up to about 80 mph just before she crashed the first time, Sloat said.

Near Arata Lane, the Jeep ran off of the highway onto the shoulder and reportedly took out about 25  feet of metal guard rail and stopped.

Hobbs said he pulled his pickup over, hit his flashing lights and started to jump out to go see if she was injured or needed help.

“I was just outside my door, and she manages to get her vehicle going again. She turns, going southbound in the northbound lane right at me,” he said. “I jump in my truck and yank the door closed, and she missed my door by inches.”

The Hobbs family recently lost a niece due to a drunken driver. The 18-year-old was killed while walking along a Red Bluff road with a friend, according to Hobbs and news accounts of last September’s fatality.

Having recently attended the sentencing hearing for the woman convicted of killing his niece, Ryan Hobbs now said he was furious at this driver’s life-endangering actions.

He decided to run down the highway shoulder after the Jeep as it was moving slowly because of two flattened tires.

Maybe he could catch it and get her to stop, he said.

“All I could see were headlights coming at us,” he said. A collision seemed unavoidable.

CHP reports indicated that soon after the woman headed in the wrong direction she sideswiped a Chevrolet Malibu.

Hobbs said the man driving that car ended up in the center divide and seeing Hobbs running, yelled to him “‘What’s going on?’ I yelled ‘You OK?’ and kept running.”

“I could see her take down another car,” he said. “I figured I’d be holding somebody’s hand or somebody was going to be dying.”

In the next collision the Jeep had sideswiped a BMW, then crashed into a fence and stopped.

Officer Sloat said no one was injured in either encounter.

When Hobbs arrived at the Jeep, he said he could hear someone crying from the other vehicle, and there were pieces of debris in the roadway.

Inside the Jeep he’d assumed he’d find an injured woman. And given her driving, he was leery of how she might react to him.

“I had my fist cocked. I cautiously approached the driver’s-side window,” he said. Surprisingly, “she was gone.”

Others nearby told Hobbs they’d seen the woman get out of the Jeep, jump the fence and disappear.

Sloat said she was last seen heading into a northern Windsor residential neighborhood near Los Amigos Road.

CHP and Windsor officers, aided by a CHP helicopter, began an unsuccessful search.

The Jeep was registered in Lake County to a Cobb resident. Officers on Tuesday were still attempting to find her, Sloat said.

Back in Ukiah on Tuesday, Ryan Hobbs said he and his wife still were somewhat shaken.

“It’s fortunate no one was hurt, aside from fears and frayed nerves,” he said.

They’d gotten home to their three children Monday night far later than they’d intended as they and other witnesses had stayed at the scene to give statements to CHP officers.

“We just hugged them and kissed them and told them we had a big story to tell once they got home from school the next day,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Randi Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.rossmann@pressdemocrat.com. ?On Twitter ?@rossmannreport.