The CHP says the suspect, 29-year-old Antonio Roberson, is on parole for human trafficking. He was driving the car that crashed on the bridge almost leading to a near closure for eight hours on the lower deck.
It was not a good morning to try to cross the Bay from San Francisco to Oakland. The surface streets and Highway 101 approach was gridlocked as far as the eye could see. What most commuters expected to be a 15-minute trip across the Bay Bridge took more like two hours. "This is pretty bad. This is incredible," commuter Seth Aure said. "It's been hell. I've been in gridlock for the last hour," another man said.
It was all because one car and its driver. The CHP says it passed one of their patrol cars at maybe 100 miles per hour headed eastbound just after 1:30 a.m. The driver crashed at the S-curve and that's when the CHP caught up with them. "They stopped to render aid to the occupants of the vehicle, assuming that this was an injury collision. At that point, the vehicle did try to flee the scene. There was a shooting," said CHP Officer Mike Ferguson.
The car went another 700 feet before it was disabled. The driver and passenger were taken into custody with injuries from the crash. Only one lane of the eastbound bridge was open while investigators gathered evidence. San Francisco police had a hard time just getting there. Lanes reopened progressively over time with all lanes open again at about 10 a.m. "The closure was so that we could secure the scene and take whatever evidence we could," Ferguson said.
Roberson is expected to be charged with DUI and weapons charges once he is released from the hospital. His passenger was a 26-year-old woman from Australia. She has been released from the hospital.
