‘We think he blacked out’: New answers for why a semi-truck plunged from I-10 onto a Las Cruces roadway below
LAS CRUCES, New Mexico - The 68-year-old driver of a semi-truck that left a highway overpass and crashed below onto a Las Cruces road continues to recover from his injuries, according to the owner of the trucking company he works for.
"It could have been bad," said Royal Jones, the president and CEO of Mesilla Valley Transportation. "Really bad."
On Jan. 28, surveillance video from a nearby hotel showed the semi-truck drive through an opening in the overpass between westbound and eastbound traffic on Interstate 10.
Miraculously, no one died in the crash. Avenida de Mesilla - a normally busy road - had no cars passing through that stretch at the time of impact.
"The last thing we want to do is hurt anybody," Jones said. "The driver is alive and hurting: still in the hospital in El Paso. But the fact that no one else was harmed? We're thankful."
The driver suffered from a broken back, cracked ribs and a broken knee from the fall, Jones said.
He also showed ABC-7 video from inside the cabin that showed the driver swerving into oncoming traffic before the highway cabling pushed his vehicle back into the correct lanes of traffic.
"The safety cables pulled him back in, so there was no head-on collision," Jones said. "There very well could have been."
Audio from the truck's cabin appears to show that the driver didn't make any noise until the very end, when his groans could be heard, presumably from injuries. For that reason, Jones believes he was not conscious in the moments leading up to the crash.
"We think he blacked out," Jones said. "He went across the rumble strips. If he was sleeping, it would have woken him up."
When asked if the driver is still employed with the company, Jones told ABC-7 that the company continues to investigate the incident. Regardless of what happened, he said he is grateful no one lost their lives in the crash.
"We're very lucky that no one was at the bottom of that bridge," Jones said.
