Motorcyclist Killed Near San Andreas Undiscovered For Days ID’d
San Andreas, CA – The CHP has released the name of a local man who perished in a motorcycle crash near San Andreas possibly a few days before his body was spotted.
According to what CHP San Andreas Unit officials are able to surmise so far, the solo crash occurred sometime in the late night or early morning hours this past Saturday as the victim, now identified as 59-year-old Robert Gaa of Valley Springs, was headed west on Highway 12 west of Highway 49.
While it is still unknown whether drugs and or alcohol were involved in Gaa’s demise, officials say for unknown reasons he allowed his 2006 Harley Davidson to drift right off the roadway while negotiating a left curve and rode down a steep embankment, colliding with several trees before he and the bike wound up in a pasture far enough below the north roadway edge of Highway 12 for motorists not to notice. However, at some time later, a person walking along the highway who was able to spy the wreckage flagged down a passing vehicle in order to make a 911 call for responders.
“He really was not expected anywhere, so no one was really worried about his whereabouts,” CHP San Andreas Unit spokesperson Officer Toby Butzler shares. “Eventually, his business partner did [begin to worry], but [Gaa] was not discovered because of that investigation…he was just discovered because someone just happened to be walking along Highway 12.”
Officer Butzler calls the incident a sobering reminder that with the warm weather come more motorcyclists, which increase the odds of mishaps. Too, he emphasizes, “We have very dangerous roadways. It is not like a five-lane freeway where you have plenty of room if you tend to drift out of your lane. Here, if you go out of your lane, it is a shoulder or an embankment or trees – or all three. So we need people to be a little more safe and control their vehicles better.”
