Motorcyclist Injured in Collision With Car on Antelope

An unidentified man looks at the remains of his Honda passenger car after it collided with a motorcycle late Friday night on Antelope Road.

A motorcyclist was taken by ambulance to a local hospital late Friday night after a collision with a car on a dark stretch of Antelope Road in southern Menifee.

The unidentified rider of the motorcycle was found lying by the side of the road near his mangled bike by motorists who happened on the scene seconds after it happened about 11:20 p.m. Kender Surin of Hemet said he stopped to see a man walking across the street, appearing to be in shock.

"He was just walking across the road, acting kind of hysterical," Surin said. "A guy driving a pickup truck stopped and told me there's another guy worse off than him."

Surin said the driver of the pickup truck called 911 while he checked on the motorcyclist, who was responsive but bleeding from the face. No other details on the rider's condition were available at the time.

The driver of the late model Honda Civic, who declined to give his name, was not seriously injured and remained on the scene. The right front of his vehicle was virtually destroyed and both air bags had deployed.

The man, who was driving northbound on Antelope a couple hundred yards north of Scott Road, said he saw the southbound motorcycle coming at him. He said he swerved to avoid a collision but couldn't.

Ironically, the motorcyclist's wife was almost a witness to the accident from another vehicle. Gathering up her husband's belongings from the side of the road before heading to the hospital, she said she wasn't sure where her husband was headed on his bike. She said she passed him on the road a short distance from the scene of the accident, turned around to follow him and came upon the accident just after it happened.

She declined to give her name or her husband's.

That section of Antelope Road has been the scene of deadly accidents in the past. In April 2013, Menifee resident Emily Blake was killed when struck head-on by another vehicle near that same curve of the road in an early evening accident that involved five vehicles and closed down the road for hours.

In the early morning hours of April 23, 2014, an Orange County man died in a single-car roll-over accident that left his Toyota 4-Runner in an open field at the side of Antelope Road.

Traffic was stopped in both directions by emergency vehicles until at least midnight.