Motorcyclist seriously hurt in alcohol-related crash
By CARLOS VILLATORO
Register Staff Writer
A night of drinking landed one Napa man in jail early Saturday morning and another in the hospital with major head injuries. California Highway Patrol officers say that alcohol was a factor in the accident that sent two men to the hospital, and later one of them to jail.
Benjamin Marshall Fadden, 21, of Napa, was driving south on Highway 29, north of Oak Knoll Avenue, at 1:50 a.m., in a Honda Civic when he made an unsafe lane change and collided with Matthew McDonald, 36, of Napa, who was driving south in a Harley Davidson motorcycle CHP Sgt. Joe McDermott said.
“The investigation determined because of Fadden’s level of intoxication, he didn’t see McDonald after he moved into the lane,” McDermott said.
After hitting the rear of the motorcycle, Fadden ran into the center divider and rolled his car over several times, coming to rest in a chain-link fence on the north shoulder of the highway, McDermott said.
McDonald was ejected from the motorcycle and came to rest in the center divider along with his bike McDermott said. Although McDonald was wearing a helmet at the time of the crash, it was not a Department of Motor Vehicles-approved helmet, McDermott said.
McDonald suffered major head injuries and was airlifted to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek. Fadden sustained moderate cuts and was taken to Queen of the Valley Medical Center and later arrested on suspicion of felony DUI causing injury to others.
The goal of the story comments section at NapaValleyRegister.com is to have an open, thought-provoking, civil community forum for all issues.
What gets your comment posted?
• Staying on topic
• Keeping your comment to 300 words or less
• Avoiding name-calling
• Addressing your comments to the message rather than the messenger
What gets your comment deleted?
• Personal attacks
• Derogatory remarks
• Name-calling of any sort
• Going off-topic
• Hate speech
• Racially-insensitive comments
• Implying guilt of a subject in a crime story before there is a court verdict
• Posting e-mail addresses
• Posting comments of a commercial nature
• POSTING WITH ALL CAPITAL LETTERS
• Linking multiple comments together with "to be continued..." to get around the 300 word limit.
The fine print
- Comments are either approved or denied. We do not edit comments.
- You are welcome to modify and resubmit a denied comment.
- Comments may take several hours to be posted.
- Comments posted are those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of NapaValleyRegister.com, its employees or its parent company.
- Do you have information on a story? Please go to our
virtual newsroom to send us a news tip.
- If you feel a posted comment has violated our guidelines, please contact
online@napanews.com or add a comment indicating you have an issue and our moderators will review the comment in question.
JMJ wrote on Jul 23, 2007 1:04 AM:
mistake? wrote on Jul 24, 2007 8:40 PM:
Brian wrote on Jul 24, 2007 10:03 PM:
I believe... wrote on Jul 26, 2007 1:09 AM: