Retired San Jose police captain dies in I-5 wreck near Chico that kills four others

A recently retired San Jose Police Department captain who served the city for a quarter of a century died over the weekend after a wrong-way driver hit his truck on Interstate 5 near Chico, a wreck that killed four others including a child and pregnant woman, according to authorities and multiple sources.

The captain, Randy Schriefer, was driving a Dodge Ram pickup truck towing a trailer north on I-5 near Corning in Tehama County — about 30 miles northwest of Chico, where he attended college — when the driver of a southbound Infiniti sedan crossed the center divider and hit Schriefer’s vehicle head-on, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Schriefer, a 52-year-old Morgan Hill resident, died at the scene. The Tehama County Coroner’s Office has not officially disclosed his identity, but multiple law-enforcement sources confirmed his identity with this news organization.

A 48-year-old Morgan Hill woman riding in the truck was seriously injured and was airlifted to a local hospital, the CHP said; authorities did not release her name.

All four occupants of the Infiniti were not wearing seat belts and were thrown from the car, according to the CHP. All four died at the scene.

The Infiniti driver was described as a 46-year-old man, and the passengers included a 47-year-old man, a 36-year-old woman and an 8-year-old girl. Officer Jason Thinnes, a spokesperson for the CHP Red Bluff area field office and a member of the agency’s accident investigation team, said the woman who died was seven months pregnant.

Thinnes said that an explanation for why the Infiniti driver traveled into oncoming traffic remains under investigation, adding that multiple eyewitnesses are being interviewed.

Schriefer joined SJPD in 1999 after three-and-a-half years working as a CHP officer in Los Angeles and San Jose, according to his LinkedIn page. As a San Jose officer and supervisor, he worked patrol, investigated and oversaw investigations into robberies, child exploitation and human trafficking cases, headed policing at the airport, and commanded the internal affairs division. As a captain, he was a patrol supervisor, headed the overall investigations bureau, and at the time of his August 2022 retirement was overseeing field training and crime prevention programs at the department.

At the time of his death, he was working as an emergency services manager for Amazon. Schriefer was an active Chico State University alum, serving as a board member for the school’s alumni association. He earned a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology in 1994 and for a about a year-and-a-half coinciding with the start of his law-enforcement career, worked as an orthopedic consultant.

This news organization was awaiting comment Monday from the police department on Schriefer’s death.

Check back later for updates to this story.