Kentucky State Police say wet roads were a factor in a fatal crash on eastbound Interstate 64 in Carter County at 2:30 pm Friday afternoon.
Both lanes at milemarker 159 were closed for hours due to the crash involving a tractor-trailer and a red car.
Kentucky State Police say Mary R. Logan, 53, of Lewis County, the sole person in the red car, hydroplaned in the rainstorm. She struck the guardrail and then was hit by a tractor-trailer. Logan was pronounced dead at the scene. Police say she was not wearing a seatbelt.
http://liarcatchers.com/accident_reconstruction.html
To avoid the collision, police say it appears the tractor-trailer hauling beauty products bound for South Carolina swerved out of the way, crashing through the guardrail and down the embankment, landing at a sharp angle. Police say the man and woman inside the tractor-trailer were fine, but were taken to the hospital to be checked out.
Carl Johnson works for Bubba’s Towing, a local company. As soon as he saw the scene, he knew who had been in the red car.
“Everybody in the local area knows everybody, knows family of each other, so when you recognize last names or vehicles it’s rough. But in our profession, what we do for a living, it’s something we learn to deal with,” says Johnson.
Johnson says Mary Logan is a mother, and his thoughts are with her family.
The long task of clearing the interstate took several hours. The Environmental Protection Team had to remove the diesel from the tractor-trailer, and then remove a stretch of guardrail, before they could begin to tow the tractor-trailer out of the embankment.
A detour was set up at milemarker 156 on I-64 East all day. That area of the interstate was expected to be open by the early morning hours Saturday.
