Rollover crash during Border Patrol pursuit injures 13 on I-8 south of Pine Valley

Three people were seriously injured when a pickup with 13 people riding in the cab and bed overturned while being pursued by Border Patrol agents Tuesday evening on Interstate 8 south of Pine Valley, authorities said.

The other 10 occupants of the Chevrolet Silverado suffered less serious injuries, Cal Fire San Diego spokesperson Capt. Frank LoCoco said. Paramedics airlifted one victim to a hospital and took the other 12 to hospitals via ambulance.

A spokesperson for the Border Patrol in San Diego said agents “were involved in a failure-to-yield incident,” but provided few other details.

“(Custom and Border Protection’s) Office of Professional Responsibility also responded to the scene,” the spokesperson, Gerrelaine Alcordo, wrote in an emailed statement, referring to Border Patrol’s parent agency within the Department of Homeland Security. “More information will be shared as it becomes available.”

California Highway Patrol officers also responded to the scene along with Cal Fire crews and the Border Patrol agents, according to LoCoco and Alcordo.

It happened a little after 6 p.m. on west I-8 between Buckman Springs Road and Sunrise Highway, according to LoCoco and Alcordo. The area is near a Border Patrol checkpoint.

“Multiple people were ejected from the back and the cab,” LoCoco said. “We found patients inside the cab as well.”

A CHP spokesman on Wednesday said investigators believe 12 people were riding unrestrained in the bed of the truck with the driver in the cab. Only the driver was wearing a seat belt.

“The driver appears to have attempted to exit at Buckman Springs Road then turned abruptly to the left, back into the main travel lanes. The driver lost control of the Chevrolet and the Chevrolet traveled across the main travel lanes of Interstate 8, onto the dirt median where rolled over.,” CHP Officer Travis Garrow said in a statement.

LoCoco, who was at the scene Tuesday night, described the truck as a late model, full-size Silverado pickup with an extra cab. He said one medical helicopter, four ambulances and five fire engines responded to the scene, which Cal Fire categorized as a “mass casualty” event.

Caltrans San Diego tweeted that all lanes of west I-8 were shut down at Buckman Springs Road between about 6:45. The lanes reopened around 8:15 p.m.

About two hours later, authorities again shut down all lanes of west I-8 in the same area, this time at Kitchen Creek Road, the next closest freeway exit and entrance to the south of Buckman Springs Road.

Caltrans San Diego tweeted that the closure was due to “police activity,” but it was unclear if the incident was related to the earlier Border Patrol pursuit crash.

The Border Patrol sent out a news release in October reporting growing concerns over “an increase in dangerous failure-to-yield incidents ... spanning from San Diego beach communities to east county.” Supervisory Agent Tekae Michael said in the release that between Oct. 1 and 27, San Diego Sector agents had encountered 23 failure-to-yield incidents involving suspected human smuggling.

Such incidents have had deadly consequences in the past. In August 2017, three people died and one was hurt when a GMC Envoy linked to a suspected murderer sped away from Border Patrol agents and crashed off Interstate 15 in Rancho Bernardo. In November 2018, three people were killed and eight were injured when a pickup fleeing from Border Patrol agents hit a spike strip, veered onto an embankment and rolled on west I-8 near Boulevard. In February 2019, two men were killed and a woman was critically injured when their vehicle crashed into a semi-truck and careened down an embankment while fleeing from a Border Patrol agent on surface streets in Otay Mesa.

In March, 14 people were killed in a smuggling incident in Imperial County that did not involve a Border Patrol pursuit. Authorities said in that collision, the driver of an SUV crammed with 25 people pulled into the path of a big rig at an intersection in Holtville.