One person died early Tuesday in a fiery crash south of Galt after a vehicle struck a construction truck, careened across all lanes of southbound Highway 99, and collided head-on with a big rig on West Stockton Boulevard. Both vehicles caught fire in the collision, which happened around 4 a.m. south of Twin Cities Road.
According to cedarnews.net, the California Highway Patrol said the vehicle first struck a construction truck traveling ahead of it before veering across the freeway and onto West Stockton Boulevard, where it collided with a big rig that was unable to stop in time. The person who died was riding in the vehicle that initially struck the construction truck, the outlet reported, though authorities have not said whether that person was the driver or a passenger. CBS News Sacramento reported the fatality as a driver who died following the big rig and car crash, a detail that has not been confirmed by CHP as of Tuesday.
Roadway Closures During the Investigation
West Stockton Boulevard was shut down between Twin Cities Road and Spring Street while officers worked the scene, though Highway 99 itself remained open to traffic throughout the investigation, per the same account. It is not known from available reports when West Stockton Boulevard reopened to drivers.
Tuesday's crash adds to a string of deadly wrecks that have plagued the Highway 99 corridor around Galt and Lodi in recent years. Less than a month earlier, on September 2, a crash just south of Jahant Road near Lodi involving two big rigs and two pickup trucks killed 23-year-old Sacramento resident Johnatan Cervantes Torres, according to cbsnews.com. CHP said in that case that a second big rig was traveling at an unsafe speed and failed to stop in time, and the freeway was closed for nearly ten hours while crews cleared the wreckage.
A Recurring Danger Zone
Galt's stretch of Highway 99 has seen fatal crashes before. In June 2023, cbsnews.com reported that a semi-truck and a sedan crashed on C Street before coming to rest on the southbound lanes of the freeway near Liberty Road, killing at least one person, CHP confirmed. Another crash on the highway's northbound lanes killed two Galt men, ages 33 and 20, in a wreck involving three big rigs and a pickup truck, according to kcra.com.
A separate 2022 crash on northbound Highway 99 just south of Simmerhorn Road in Galt killed 42-year-old Richard Jooha Lim of Stockton, the Sacramento Bee reported at the time. CHP has not released the identity of the person killed in Tuesday's crash, and no further details on the condition of others involved or potential citations have been made public.
