CHP Motorcycle Officer Crash On I-15 In Lake Elsinore: 'He'll Be OK'

LAKE ELSINORE, CA — A California Highway Patrol motorcycle officer who crashed Tuesday afternoon on Interstate 15 in Lake Elsinore is expected to make a full recovery, an agency spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.

"He'll be OK," CHP Officer Keith Ballantyne said Wednesday. "He's stable and talking, but he's still hospitalized."

Photos from the scene showed the officer down in lanes with his crashed bike nearby. He was taken to Wildomar's Southwest Healthcare Inland Valley Hospital.

Ballantyne said no other vehicles were involved in the wreck and an object in the road may have triggered the crash, which remains under investigation.

The incident was reported just before 2 p.m. south of Nichols Road on the southbound side of the freeway; a SigAlert was issued at 2:08 p.m.

The crash prompted a seven-hour closure of southbound I-15 as CHP investigators processed the scene. The crashed motorcycle was removed from lanes around 8 p.m. and the freeway reopened minutes before 9 p.m.

Earlier in the day, the CHP reported all lanes would be shut down for an "unknown duration."

Through much of the afternoon and evening, southbound traffic backed up to state Route 91 in Corona.

Ballantyne and the Riverside County Sheriff's Department confirmed that a freeway pursuit conducted by deputies at approximately the same time was unrelated to the CHP incident.

According to Sgt. Deirdre Vickers, the pursuit by deputies began at 12:45 p.m. Tuesday in the 32000 block of Clinton Keith Road in Wildomar. Lake Elsinore Sheriff's Station deputies chased two grand theft suspects who were heading north on I-15 in a sedan. The chase ended in the Ontario area and the suspects were arrested.

Another unrelated sheriff's investigation involving three grand theft suspects occurred at approximately the same time, according to Vickers. It began in the 40000 block of Winchester Road in Temecula and involved Southwest Sheriff's Station deputies. There was no chase, but a police helicopter tracked the suspects, who were eventually arrested in Orange County, Vickers said.

"Those incidents were northbound, and the CHP incident was southbound," Vickers said.