Jockey Hansen Still Is Missing After Car Crash : Jurisprudence: He vanishes from scene after his car allegedly causes an injury accident on bridge.

Jockey Ron Hansen, whose career has been punctuated by controversy, was still missing late Sunday, more than a day after his 1990 Jaguar was involved in a two-car accident on the San Mateo Bridge in Northern California.

Hansen didn’t ride at Bay Meadows on Saturday or Sunday. His family, agent and the three stewards at Bay Meadows were unable to account for the 33-year-old jockey’s whereabouts, and a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol said that Hansen was being sought in the investigation of a hit-and-run incident on the bridge.

Sheila Gaudreau, one of the Bay Meadows stewards, said that she was told that Hansen’s family had hired a private investigator. California Horse Racing Board investigators are also involved.

“I haven’t seen Ron since after the races Friday night,” said Hansen’s agent, Wayne McDonnell. “It’s kind of scary and awfully strange. Some people have been saying that he’s hiding out, but that’s not the case. No person in North America has heard from him. We’re all hoping that he’s all right.”

Braulio Mendieta of the California Highway Patrol, quoting from a report of the accident, said that Hansen’s vehicle was traveling at speeds up to 100 m.p.h. at about 2:30 a.m. Saturday when it rear-ended a car it tried to pass while it was changing lanes. The Hansen car crashed into a concrete rail on the bridge, spun around and turned over, Mendieta said.

The driver and a passenger in the other car were treated for “moderate” injuries, according to the report. The Jaguar had been abandoned by the time CHP officers arrived at the scene of the accident.

“Witnesses at the scene said that the driver of the Jaguar walked off, and probably got a ride from somebody else,” Mendieta said.

McDonnell said that he was told that when the CHP reached the scene, officers found the keys to the Jaguar missing and the car’s hazard lights flashing.

Mendieta said that because the occupants of the other car were injured, the case is being treated as a possibly felony.

The San Mateo Bridge connects San Mateo, where Bay Meadows is located, and Hayward. Hansen lives in Alameda, which is on the Hayward side of the bridge. Both cars were eastbound, in the direction of Hayward, when the accident occurred.

Hansen was replaced by Tommy Chapman on Saturday when Hansen’s scheduled mount, Slew of Damascus, won the $200,000 Bay Meadows Handicap in a record time.

Hansen began his riding career in Canada in 1978, the year he was voted the country’s top apprentice jockey. He has ridden more than 3,600 winners and his mounts have earned about $40 million. Hansen set the track record at Bay Meadows with 158 victories in 1990-91. He won 342 races overall in 1991, finishing fifth nationally. Hansen was also the leading jockey at Fairplex Park from 1982 through 1985.

In 1990, Hansen rode Video Ranger to a fourth-place finish in the Kentucky Derby and they lost by a head to Yonder in the Jersey Derby at Garden State Park.

That was also the year in which Golden Gate Fields ruled him off the track for five weeks. He was reinstated by the California Horse Racing Board, which said that charges of race-fixing and bribing jockeys were unsubstantiated.

At Churchill Downs, a few days before the 1990 Derby, Hansen told reporters that he had been married in 1989 in a Las Vegas ceremony during which the bride, the groom and the minister were all nude.