Final victim of fatal Highway 101 pileup is identified
Men were in vehicles that crashed into a disabled Ford pickup
The Santa Clara County Medical Examiner's Office on Tuesday identified the third man killed on Highway 101 early Monday after a multicar pileup near Sunnyvale.
Nicacio Negrete Gutierrez, a 53-year-old Sunnyvale resident, died along with 28-year-old Tyler Rasay of South San Francisco and 24-year-old Paul Dennig Jr. of Mountain View, according to the medical examiner's office.
The men were in vehicles that crashed into a disabled Ford pickup truck that had earlier lost control, hit the center median and blocked the far left lane on northbound Highway 101 just south of Fair Oaks Avenue.
After the pileup, the men exited their vehicles and stood in the center median area when two more cars crashed into the collision site, killing one of them and throwing the two other men over the median, where they were fatally hit by a southbound vehicle, CHP Officer Ross Lee said.
Lee said the crash remains under investigation. There was no immediate indication that any of the drivers was impaired by drugs or alcohol.
Pete Esty, longtime friend of 28-year-old Rasay, told ABC7 that Rasay loved making people happy.
“He's the type of guy that would always put a smile on your face,” Esty said. “He's the type of guy that would walk into the room always smiling.”
The mother of the 24-year old Dennig told the news station that her son was kind, thoughtful and intelligent.
According to the CHP, the other three drivers in the chain-reaction crash were taken to the hospital with what were described as moderate injuries. They were identified as a 28-year-old San Jose man, a 38-year-old East Palo Alto man and an 18-year-old woman from Temecula, a city in Riverside County in Southern California.
Both directions of Highway
101 were blocked between
Lawrence Expressway and Fair Oaks Avenue for several hours Monday, diverting traffic off of the freeway. At least six vehicles were towed.