Three dead in two Highway 12 crashes outside of Santa Rosa

Two fatal automobile accidents occurred minutes apart on opposite ends of Highway 12 outside Santa Rosa on Monday during a rainy morning commute.

Police responded at 8:20 to reports of a collision on Highway 12 just east of Oakmont Drive. A white pickup truck had crashed into the passenger side of a black Nissan Sentra, killing both occupants of the sedan. The victims, both from the city of Sonoma, were a 44-year-old woman and her daughter, 21, who had been driving. Authorities declined to release their identities Monday.

The dual tragedies took place just as weather in the Santa Rosa area took a turn for the worse. A little more than a quarter-inch of rain fell in the city between 8:30 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. and wind gusts reached 30 mph, said National Weather Service meteorologist Brayden Murdock.

Santa Rosa firefighters were on the scene of the crash near Oakmont Drive within four minutes. The driver and her mother were removed from the vehicle with hydraulic equipment and pronounced dead at the scene, battalion chief Matthew Gloeckner said.

The driver of the pickup had been traveling east when the Nissan lost control, turning sideways as sedan crossed the highway divider and was struck by the truck, Santa Rosa CHP spokesman officer David deRutte said.

The unidentified pickup driver was transported to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital with minor injuries.

While the front tires of the Sentra had plenty of tread, deRutte said, officers noticed that the car’s rear tires “didn’t have a ton of traction on them.” Authorities think those tires may have been a factor in the crash in the rainy conditions.

Several minutes after that wreck was reported, Redcom dispatchers started getting reports of a second crash, 12 miles west on Highway 12 at Merced Avenue. A Toyota Matrix had collided with a box truck. The truck ended up upside down. The driver of the Matrix, an unidentified 32-year-old man from Sebastopol, died in the collision.

Witnesses reported seeing the driver of the Matrix begin to swerve before veering into the oncoming, westbound lane. After colliding first with a Ford Transit van, the Matrix then crashed head-on with the box truck.

That vehicle, bearing the sign “Moore Home Services,” came to rest on its roof. The driver of the box truck was taken to Santa Rosa's Kaiser Permanente hospital, with injuries deRutte described as “major but not life-threatening.”

After colliding with the Matrix, the Ford van crashed into an Acura, driven by a woman, who was not injured. The male driver of that Ford van suffered minor injuries.

Santa Rosa can expect more rain Wednesday, then again on Friday, according to the National Weather Service. While those showers will be lighter than Monday’s, motorists still need to use caution and good judgment, said DeRutte, who pointed out that when conditions are wet and visibility is poor, the safe speed is not necessarily the speed limit.

“People just need to slow down,” the CHP officer said.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this online story misidentified the model of the car driven by the mother and daughter who were killed in the wreck near Oakmont Drive.

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at 707-521-5214 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.