I-5 closure snarled traffic as officers talked with man on bridge. Angry motorists have questions.

The gridlock was epic.

For eight hours on Friday, Interstate 5 at Del Mar Heights Road was closed, at times in both directions, as police talked with a suicidal man perched on a bridge above the freeway. And for miles around that spot, motorists endured a massive, extended transportation nightmare that slowed travel around the region.

Social media posts captured some of the pain. For some, nature called and there was no way to answer. Someone wrote on X that they saw a guy get out of his car to urinate on the highway.

A father said his young children had to use a plastic bag as a toilet in the backseat during the long car ride. “There was no communication, no presence on the ground, and no plan to support the thousands of people who were trapped for hours,” Solana Beach resident Kristoffer Kelly said in an email. “On-ramps should have been closed immediately. Cars should have been guided off the freeway or turned around in a controlled way.”

La Mesa resident Nick Durham said he and his girlfriend were headed to an office Christmas party in Irvine but gave up and turned back. It took five hours to drive 13 miles near the closure. “I cannot believe, for the life of me, that we could not find a single way to get this guy off the freeway before the ninth hour,” Durham wrote on Reddit. “Absolutely blows my mind they let one dude shut down an entire county.”

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