Authorities Sunday released the name of a motorcycle rider who was killed when tried to use the freeway shoulder to pass traffic as he raced another vehicle through heavy post-fair traffic on Interstate 5 and rammed a car.
Garrett McMillian Hughes, 35, of Encinitas was riding a Harley Davidson Sportster motorcycle south on Interstate 5, approaching Del Mar Heights Road, shortly before midnight Friday, according to the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office. He was wearing a helmet.
Hughes was riding at a high rate of speed and weaved in and out of traffic then moved from the far right lane onto the shoulder to pass another vehicle. He may have been racing at the time, the Medical Examiner's Office said.
The bike struck the back of a 1998 Honda Civic that was stopped on the shoulder and the motorcycle rider was thrown from the bike, which caused fatal injuries, the California Highway Patrol. Traffioc was reportedly jammed with patrons leaving the nearby fair at Del Mar.
The Civic's occupants, a 19-year-old Lakeside man and a 19-year-old woman from El Cajon, were not injured, the CHP said.
The motorcycle then collided with a Mercury which caused the driver of that car to swerve and hit the left rear of a Chrysler, The CHP said.
A passenger in the Mercury, a 21-year-old El Cajon man, sustained minor injuries, the CHP said.
Hughes lived in an Encinitas apartment and worked as sous chef.
-City News Service
