A tow truck operator recovering vehicles from a Tuesday night crash near Wamsutter along Interstate-80 was struck by a pickup, the Wyoming Highway Patrol reports.
The tow truck operator was life-flighted from the scene, the agency added.
A tow company was trying to recover vehicles around 9 a.m. Wednesday on I-80 west of Wamsutter, stemming from a Tuesday-evening crash involving two tractor-trailer units that had left the road the previous night, says a statement by the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
“Due to hazardous conditions, the vehicles were left in place overnight,” says the statement, released Wednesday afternoon.
One of the commercial vehicles lost its load of lumber during the recovery process. The lumber was being reloaded onto the trailer in the median, safely away from the road.
A pickup approached the scene, lost control and struck a member of the tow recovery team, the statement says.
Rock Springs resident Cody Stevens witnessed a crash which, as he described it, sounds like the Wednesday collision.
He was driving toward Wamsutter for work between mile markers 157 and 159, when he noticed semitrucks off the road: one upside down, and another on its wheels next to it, Stevens told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday phone interview.
Stevens saw “this orangish colored Ford pickup truck come flying down the hill and spin out and slam into either the semi or the pickup behind it,” he said.
There were several vehicles off the road at the time, and he couldn’t tell which one it struck, he added. It looked like some vehicles were transferring lumber off a semitruck, he added.
“(The orangish pickup) bounced off, spun about three times and ended up in the westbound lane,” said Stevens.
He later clarified the pickup had originally been in the westbound lane, but ended up back in it after the collision and came to rest “dead center” in the road.
Around that area, the road went from being merely wet to being “solid ice,” he said, theorizing that the pickup truck’s driver didn’t anticipate the ice.
“I think (the driver) thought he was in the clear on the wet, and then he hit that ice,” said Stevens. “The whole road was a solid sheet of ice, both lanes, from Rock Springs to there.”
In dash cam video posted to Facebook on Wednesday, Lance Paul Scarpellino drives past the scene after several tow trucks had responded. It doesn't appear the crash with the pickup had yet happened. Scarpellino also urges people to "be careful out there."
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
