On a Sunday night and early Monday morning, I heard three bad crashes come over the scanner — and CHP confirmed every one was suspected DUI

Editor’s Note — Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Truly. Any one of these individuals could be found innocent. An arrest is not a conviction; it isn’t even a charge. It’s simply a suspicion that must be tested and proven in court.

On Sunday, March 8, while gathering news for the Monday KOZT report, I kept an ear on the scanner. Five serious crashes came through in just a few hours. One was a high‑speed chase down Highway 20. Another was a wrong‑way driver at a spot where it’s far too easy to enter the freeway incorrectly. The last one shut down 101 in both directions — it happened while I was in the studio across from Dred Scott.

With help from CHP information officer Olegario Marin — honestly, mostly him — we tracked down all four major crashes, including a multi‑injury wreck in Lake County. To my astonishment, every single one resulted in a DUI arrest. All four.

I’ve never stopped being stunned by how destructive alcohol is in this culture, especially after the close‑up view I’ve had at the hospital. I never knew the scale until I started hearing it night after night on the scanner.

I decided to see how these cases would be handled after the arrests. It took several days to pull everything together — and so far the DA hasn’t filed a single one. So I’m putting out the story now, and I’ll keep following every case as it moves, or doesn’t move, through the system.

Crash #1 — A high‑speed chase ended with a suspected‑DUI driver ejected from his wrecked car. On March 8, officers were led on a pursuit down Highway 20 until the driver lost control, rolled down an embankment, and was thrown from the vehicle. He was unconscious but alive when deputies and first responders reached him.

Here is the report on that incident from officer Marin. CHP provided info in bold.

Officers from the California Highway Patrol Ukiah Area responded to a traffic collision on 03/08/2026 @ 3:04AM on State Route 20 at Marina Drive after the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office requested to conduct a traffic collision investigation and driver evaluation. The request followed a pursuit by deputies in which the suspect vehicle  left the roadway and traveled approximately 50 feet down an embankment.  The driver sustained major injuries and was transported to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital for treatment.  Following further investigation, the driver (Diego Vallejo of Ukiah) was released to the hospital for medical care. A complaint will be filed for 23152(a) VC (Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol), 23152(b) VC (Driving With a Blood Alcohol Content of 0.08% or Greater), and 148(a) PC (Resisting/Obstructing a Peace Officer) with the Mendocino County District attorney’s office.

As of March 17, we found no DA filing on the above case. The man may still be in the hospital. Court files are essentially private now, as the image shows. In this instance, a Diego Vallejo of Ukiah had a pending case for disorderly conduct and being under the influence of controlled substances at the time of the crash. It’s possible there are two men with the same name, but the details match — and we did additional research at our own expense to be sure.

The traditional means of verifying facts are gone in this era of digital everything, where access is restricted and the public record is treated like a privilege instead of a right. Why should you even know about a man leading officers on an early‑morning high‑speed chase? Because if people understood how much damage one alcohol‑addicted person can do, they might be more inclined to support real investment in treatment — including mandatory long‑term rehab instead of a quick jail sentence.

And because our public servants — the officers in blue, the paramedics, the helicopter crews, the ER staff — pour themselves into these cases in the middle of the night, mostly unseen now. Their work deserves daylight.

Most of all, we need to know about public business and public records. Without that, we’re left with rumor, press releases, and whatever the system chooses to show us. That’s not transparency. That’s managed information. And a community that can’t see its own reality can’t fix it.

When we got the facts for this next one, I felt a little sheepish. I’ve preached plenty about road safety, and I’ve long believed this exit is a problem. Think back to the northbound 101 exit at Redwood Valley: if you’re not turning left toward The Broiler (yum) and instead heading right toward the Coyote Valley Casino, it is very easy to turn too early and end up going the wrong way into oncoming freeway traffic. The whole intersection is misaligned and confusing — an accident waiting to happen. And on that Sunday night, it did: a head‑on collision.

But it turns out a drunk driver was involved.

Crash #2 — A two‑vehicle, non‑injury collision occurred on March 8 at 8:01 p.m. on the northbound 101 off‑ramp to West Road. Investigators determined that Kercee Andrews of Ukiah was driving a 2005 GMC Yukon the wrong way on the off‑ramp when she collided with a 2016 Toyota Highlander driven by Wendy Oliver of Redwood Valley. Officers observed signs that Andrews was under the influence, and after further investigation she was arrested on suspicion of violating 23152(a) VC (Driving Under the Influence of Alcohol) and 23152(b) VC (Driving With a Blood Alcohol Content of 0.08% or Greater). No injuries were reported.

Again, there is no sign of a case filed beyond the booking log. Nothing in the courts. We’ve had long‑term concerns about inequitable prosecution in Mendocino County — and in every county we’ve worked in — but there is something particularly odd about DUI prosecutions here. We were researching this pattern when the courts cut off access. Now it’s hopeless.

The young journalist who comes along after I’m gone will never even be able to imagine finding out things like this, or imagine a time when public records were actually public. And that’s everybody’s loss — everyone who ever encounters the court system, everyone who cares about actual justice, everyone who believes openness in the courts is more than a slogan.

It is Justice that is supposed to be blind. Not the people watching her.

With the tirade about restricted court files now over, we do want to thank CHP Officer Olegario Marin for getting all of this information for us. Education is part of his job, and we got one. We assumed these crashes were routine. They weren’t. Every single one was a DUI.

Crash #3 — This third crash seemed the least likely to be a DUI. It happened during the Monday‑morning commute, on a day we’d already warned would be darker than usual because of the time change. The collision snapped a power pole, briefly shut down 101 in both directions, and created traffic headaches for the rest of the day. But despite the timing and the circumstances, this one also turned out to be a DUI. up being a DUI.

According to the initial investigation, a Willits woman collided with a power pole, knocking down power lines. US‑101 and North State Street were closed from 4:36 to 5:07 a.m., and traffic was disrupted on and off throughout the day while PG&E made repairs. During the on‑scene investigation, officers observed signs that the woman was under the influence, and after further investigation, she was arrested on suspicion of violating 23152(f) VC. We were unable to find any booking or other court information for her so we omitted her name.

Three crashes. Three suspected DUIs. Three cases that may or may not ever see the inside of a courtroom — and we won’t know, because the public can no longer see what the public pays for. That’s the part that lingers. Not just the wreckage on the highway, but the wreckage of a system that once let us follow a case from the sirens to the sentencing.

We’re grateful to CHP Officer Olegario Marin for helping us piece together what we could. Without him, even this much would have stayed in the dark. But the larger truth is harder to ignore: alcohol is tearing through this county, through families, through budgets, through the backs of first responders who show up at 4 a.m. while the rest of us sleep. And the public record — the tool that once let us understand the scale of the problem — is shrinking to a sliver.

So we’ll keep doing what we can. We’ll keep listening to the scanner. We’ll keep calling CHP. We’ll keep tracking the cases the courts no longer let us see. Because if we stop paying attention, the damage doesn’t stop — it just stops being counted.

And a community that can’t see what’s happening on its own roads is a community already drifting across the center line.