Suicide at Gopher Canyon

At around 3:30 p.m. on May 21, a gray-haired man in a white T-shirt stopped his pickup truck on the northbound on ramp of I-15 at Gopher Canyon Road. The man said to witnesses he was going to commit suicide. He did.

As a CHP unit was rolling toward the scene, the man raised a 22-caliber handgun to his head. San Marcos sheriff’s units were on the way, too, but it was too late by the time law enforcement arrived, according to the sheriff’s communications center’s Lt. Nelson.

The CHP immediately shut down the northbound on-ramp upon arrival.

Lou Regello of Fallbrook was driving with his girlfriend and her adult son as they turned left onto the on-ramp and saw two stopped cars on the right and the pickup truck on the left. People were waving at him to not stop. He saw the body and immediately shouted to his two passengers to turn away. “Don’t look, don’t look,” Regello shouted. “I didn’t want them seeing him lying there. It was a gruesome scene,” he said. Regello said the man clearly had a gunshot wound to the head.

Regello believes it must have just happened as they were approaching the I-5/Gopher Canyon interchange, as no police officers were yet on the scene. He and his family’s conversation on the way home was about the preciousness of life and why it is important to be kind to one another.