An Ohio youth who turned 17 was detained after he pleaded guilty to having caused an insufferable road accident on September 29, 2023 with a tanker truck filled with toxic ash that killed five people.
Former National Transportation Safety Board employees stated that the young driver’s son stated while being interviewed that the lady herself admitted to being in Illinois that day to meet her mother’s boy friend. When telling the story about her trip, she recollects that when she was driving behind a few trucks, she came across a slow car and decided to accelerate and zoom past it.
And I was behind this boxy maybe trailer or RV. And this RV was very slow in moving, so I passed him,” she narrated seemingly oblivious to the headline new that followed that.
She said about the tanker truck, “I heard that maybe it flipped, maybe it was on its side and went off the road.” I did not see or hear the big bang, just the big fire engines going by me, going the opposite direction.
Later on, however, dashcam footage would paint further details quite different from the original. The moment where a teenager was trying to overtake an anhydrous ammonia tanker at a speed of about 90 miles per hour was also captured on video. As a result of the jackknife maneuver, the truck crashed into an adjoining utility trailer parked off the highway, rupturing the tank and causing thousands of gallons of the burning chemical to flood the air. This toxic plume would cause the evacuation of almost 500 people for several hours.
When she was shown the dashcam video she said, “Oh, (expletive). Yeah, oh my goodness. Yep. Fully my fault, wow, holy (expletive).” He seemed to accept blame for the road traffic accident that led to disastrous consequences.
The accident near Teutopolis , Illinois, killed five people including a father and his two children and also caused an extensive evacuation of over 500 people from the surrounding area.
