Global Courant 2023-05-20 03:41:12
Oregon police said the driver of a semi truck that crashed into a van on Interstate 5 was arrested Friday on suspicion of drunk driving and manslaughter. 11 people were in the van when it was hit, six people died on the spot, one was airlifted to a hospital and four others were injured. Lincoln Clayton Smith was arrested for reckless driving, manslaughter, assault and suspected driving under the influence of intoxicants.
The driver of a semi truck that crashed into a passenger van on Interstate 5 in western Oregon, killing 7 people in one of the state’s deadliest crashes in recent years, was arrested Friday on suspicion of manslaughter , driving under the influence and other charges, police said.
Authorities say 11 people were in the van when it was hit. According to Oregon State Police, six people died at the scene, one died after being airlifted to a hospital, and four were injured.
Lincoln Clayton Smith, 52, of North Highlands, California, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of intoxicants, reckless driving, manslaughter and assault, police said.
Smith was being held at the Marion County Jail. He had not yet appeared in court and it was not clear if he had a lawyer.
Two trucks and the van were involved in the accident Thursday afternoon near Albany in a farming area in the Willamette Valley.
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Police say the truck left the northbound lanes of Interstate 5 on Thursday and hit the van while it was parked on the side of the highway. The van was then pushed into the back of another truck parked in front of it.
Northbound lanes of I-5 were closed for hours during an expert investigation, but reopened Thursday evening, state transportation officials said.
Oregon State Police troopers and firefighters work near the site of a wrecked tractor-trailer along Interstate 5 in Albany, Oregon, on Thursday, May 18, 2023. (Alex Powers/Albany Democrat-Herald via AP)
Bodies were covered in plastic in a nearby field, the Albany Democrat-Herald reported. Police and firefighters put a blue tarp on the wrecked van and placed a barrier near one of the trucks to block view of the scene, the news outlet said.
Witness Adrian Gonzalez told the Salem Statesman Journal that two Life Flight helicopters landed and carried people away while paramedics treated people on the ground.
“Judging by the damage, it looked like the van was trapped,” he said. “It’s been hit really hard.”
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The crash is one of Oregon’s deadliest in recent years.
A head-on collision on a remote road in eastern Oregon’s Harney County in August 2018 killed a family of seven, including five young children. A total of eight people were killed.
In December 2012, nine people died after a tour bus drove on icy Interstate 84 and crashed through a guardrail and plunged several hundred feet down a steep embankment. The bus was carrying about 40 people when the accident occurred in an area near Pendleton called Deadman Pass.
Another crash in 1988, also near Albany on I-5, killed 7 people and injured 37. Two babies were among those killed in the fiery 23-vehicle pile-up.
Albany is located between Salem and Eugene and is about 70 miles south of Portland. I-5 is the main north-south highway on the west coast.
