A 17-year-old in Clarksville, Tennessee, heard a string of crashes Friday night and ran toward the noise.
Across Wilma Rudolph Boulevard, an 18-wheeler had left the roadway and torn through two parking lots, damaging parked vehicles before stopping with its cab badly mangled. August McMurtry told WSMV that he crossed traffic and reached the truck while a tree was still lying across it and the driver’s door was jammed shut.
McMurtry said two other men joined him as they worked to get the 50-year-old driver out. The teen remembered the driver as coherent once they freed him, but said the man did not seem to know what had happened.
By the time the truck stopped, at least 10 parked cars had been damaged. The driver was the only person reported injured.
Into The Cab
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McMurtry told WSMV he heard “boom, boom, boom” before running across the road. When he reached the truck, he said the impact damage made it difficult to open the door.
The teen described the driver’s foot as caught around the accelerator area and said a piece of pipe was close to the man’s head. With two other men helping, they managed to pull him from the cab.
“When I got the dude out, he was fully coherent,” McMurtry told the station. “He didn’t know what really happened though.”
McMurtry said he thought the driver may have suffered a medical emergency, but that remains unconfirmed. WSMV reported that Dash 10 Media had separately been told the driver may have lost consciousness before the crash. The cause remained under investigation.
Across Two Lots
A separate WSMV report, citing a Tennessee Highway Patrol crash report, said the wreck happened shortly after 11:15 p.m. Sept. 18.
The truck had been traveling south on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard when it crossed out of its lane, left the road, and struck a tree. It then continued into the neighboring parking lots of Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen and Trane Technologies, damaging 10 parked cars along with trees, bushes, and a fence before coming to a stop.
The driver was taken to a hospital for treatment. WSMV reported that the preliminary THP report did not list charges related to the crash.
Checking The Cars
Once the driver was out, McMurtry’s attention shifted to the vehicles the truck had hit.
He said he asked one of the men who had run over with him to check the cars and make sure nobody was inside. None of them were occupied, he said.
Melody Young, who owns Spooky’s Halloween Store across the street, told WSMV that Wilma Rudolph Boulevard routinely has traffic at that hour and that she was shocked no one else was hurt.
One of the damaged cars belonged to Armando Quiros, who was working inside the Trane facility when coworkers alerted him to the crash. He went outside and found his vehicle smashed near the truck.
Quiros told the station he was waiting to learn whether his insurer would declare the car a total loss. His immediate concern, however, was elsewhere: he said he was thankful nobody else had been hurt and hoped the truck driver would recover.