How to resolve AdBlock issue?
Capt. James Bauman of the Lake County Sheriff's Office said Ronald Alan Gustafson was found on Monday afternoon after he had been injured in a motorcycle wreck.
On Sunday, May 29, at approximately 10:30 p.m., sheriff’s deputies responded to a vacation home in Lower Lake to investigate a missing person, Bauman said.
Helen Gustafson reported that her husband, Ronald Gustafson, had failed to return from a day ride he had taken on his dual-sport motorcycle to visit friends at a cabin in the “Board Camp” area of the National Forest in Colusa County, according to Bauman.
Ronald Gustafson had left their vacation home on Swedberg Road in Lower Lake at approximately 11 a.m. Sunday and was due to return by 7 p.m. Bauman said Helen Gustafson had last heard from her husband at approximately 4 p.m. as he was leaving the cabin to return to Lower Lake.
Sheriff’s deputies spent several hours before dawn on Monday morning searching for signs of Gustafson or his trail, Bauman said. Despite checking four different forest service roads and venturing as many as 12 miles into the forest, deputies were unable to locate Gustafson.
At approximately 8 a.m. Monday sheriff’s Lt. Chris Macedo began coordinating a Search and Rescue operation to locate Gustafson, Bauman said.
As further information was gathered from Helen Gustafson, Bauman said Search and Rescue volunteer ATV teams and a SAR volunteer logistical team established a base camp off of Elk Mountain Road.
He said that by late morning, a fixed-wing California Highway Patrol airplane had responded to the area from Redding to assist with the search. A U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer also responded to assist.
At approximately noon on Monday, Search and Rescue authorities determined that Gustafson had been found by two unidentified motorcycle riders on forest road 17N04 near Crabtree Hot Springs, Bauman said.
Gustafson had reportedly wrecked his motorcycle and was injured. Bauman said the two riders, who had found Gustafson shortly after 11 a.m., had apparently stayed with the injured man until another unidentified party driving a pickup truck happened by and managed to get Gustafson into the truck.
As Search and Rescue authorities were preceding to the area of the wrecked motorcycle, they crossed paths with the pickup truck just as Gustafson was being driven from the site, Bauman said.
He said a REACH helicopter was dispatched to the area and after finding a landing zone, Gustafson was transported to the air ambulance and subsequently flown to the U.C. Davis Medical center with a possible fractured leg.
It was later determined that Gustafson had wrecked his motorcycle on the forest road at approximately 5 p.m. the previous evening and was stranded the entire night where the bike went down, Bauman said.
Sheriff Frank Rivero expressed his deepest gratitude to Macedo, the Search and Rescue volunteers who contributed to the operation, the CHP air crew, the REACH air crew, the U.S. Forest Service, and to the civilians who found Gustafson and expedited his rescue.
Follow Lake County News on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LakeCoNews , on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-County-News/143156775604?ref=mf , on Tumblr at http://lakeconews.tumblr.com/ and on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/LakeCoNews .
2 of 2
