Two people were killed early Sunday when a minivan slammed into a semi-truck trailer on the eastbound 210 Freeway in Rialto and became wedged underneath it, according to authorities. The crash happened around 2:30 a.m. west of Riverside Avenue, triggering a Sig Alert and shutting down lanes for hours while crews worked to free the vehicle.
California Highway Patrol officers and Rialto fire crews arrived to find a Honda Odyssey minivan trapped beneath the trailer, according to CHP dispatcher Charlene Vasquez, speaking to the Daily Bulletin. “There was a semi pulled over on the right shoulder. There was a car going east that crashed into it, and then they got stuck under the semi,” Vasquez said. Vasquez said two people in the minivan were pronounced dead at the scene.
Dispatch Logs Detail Chaotic Scene
Dispatch records obtained by chpbigrig.com placed the collision at 2:37 a.m., describing an unknown vehicle rear-ending a big rig that had pulled onto the right shoulder, with the vehicle becoming stuck underneath the trailer. At 2:41 a.m., a caller reported one passenger unconscious, another female facing backward, and a male driver trying to open a door, according to the same dispatch log.
All lanes were reported stopped by 2:48 a.m., and CHP issued a Sig Alert six minutes later at 2:54 a.m., per the dispatch feed. The freeway reopened fully by 7:49 a.m., the same log shows. Authorities told the Daily Bulletin they had no further information available as the investigation continued.
A Known Trouble Spot for Collisions
Freeway crashes along I-10 and SR-210 in the Rialto area generally fall under the jurisdiction of the CHP San Bernardino Area Office, according to Arash Law. The same analysis found the Route 210 corridor recorded 120 collisions in Rialto in a 2025 dataset — the highest count among the freeway corridors it examined — while the I-10 and Riverside Avenue interchange logged 46 collisions over the same period. That data does not establish a trend in fatal crashes specifically, and nothing in the record ties it directly to Sunday's crash.
It is not the first fatal wreck on this stretch of freeway. A 2014 crash on eastbound I-210 in Rialto, reported by the Los Angeles Times, also involved a semi-truck and a shoulder-parked vehicle. In that earlier incident, a semi plowed into an SUV parked on the shoulder near Alder Avenue around 5:20 a.m., propelling the SUV onto a sand embankment and killing one of its three passengers; the other occupants and the truck driver were taken to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center. Two of the four eastbound lanes were closed at the time as investigators worked to determine a cause, the Times reported.
No further details on the identities of those killed Sunday, the cause of the crash, or the condition of any surviving occupants had been released as of Sunday morning. Authorities said the investigation remains ongoing.
