An Ohio girl admits she cut off a tanker that spilled chemicals in Illinois last year, killing five people

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) – A Federal report about a tanker truck accident a year ago in central Illinois that spilled a toxic chemical and killed five people, includes an interview with a 17-year-old Ohio girl who admits the truck left the road when she she drove past it in the minivan.

The The tanker slowed and moved to the right to allow the minivan to get back into the right lane and avoid a head-on collision with oncoming traffic on two-lane US 40 in Teutopolis on September 29, 2023, according to dashcam video of the truck also released late Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

“Oh, (expletive). Yes. Oh my goodness. Yes, completely my mistake. Wow. “Holy (expletive),” the girl said while watching video from the ill-fated truck during an Illinois State Police interview on Oct. 4, 2023.

The tanker truck was loaded with caustic, anhydrous ammonia when it crashed into a commercial vehicle trailer parked directly on the highway. The hitch punctured the tank and about half of the 7,500 gallons (28,390 liters) of cargo spilled west of Teutopolis, a community about 110 miles (177 kilometers) northeast of St. Louis, about 8:40 p.m.

Five people diedincluding three family members who were near the road at the time of the incident. About 500 people were evacuated for hours after the accident to prevent them from being exposed to the dangerous cloud of the chemical, which is used by farmers to add nitrogen fertilizer to the soil and as a refrigerant in large buildings.

The transportation agency said the latest findings were merely factual and did not contain any analysis or conclusions expected at a later date.

The Illinois State Police conducted its own investigation, and spokeswoman Melaney Arnold said the department turned over its findings to Effingham County Prosecutor Aaron Jones last month. A message seeking comment from Jones was left at his office Thursday.

The girl, whose name is redacted in the state police interview transcript because she was a minor at the time, said she was with her mother and brother visiting her mother’s boyfriend in a suburb of St. Louis, Illinois visit. A crash on Interstate 70 earlier in the night caused a lot of traffic to be diverted onto U.S. 40, and she said she passed three trucks on the road heading west toward Teutopolis.

The girl said she passed the tanker in an overtaking zone, even though a no overtaking sign was visible in the video. She said as she began to overtake, she realized she had to speed up to avoid oncoming traffic and estimated she was going 90 miles per hour when she backed to the right, narrowly sliding past an oncoming vehicle. She told investigators her mother was upset about the close call, but she thought she had enough freedom.

However, she declined police interrogators’ offer to show the dashcam video again.

“No, you don’t have to. It was completely my fault,” the girl said. “I’ve honestly had times in the past where I just haven’t used good judgment when assessing distances and whether I have enough time to do something.”

While trying to make room for the pickup truck to overtake, the truck went onto the shoulder, lost traction on gravel and then crashed into a drainage culvert, according to the truck driver, who survived. As she continued driving west, the girl said she soon saw emergency vehicles coming east but couldn’t connect them with the truck passing.

She said that before the family’s trip back to Ohio, as she read news reports about the crash, her mother had no idea it had happened.

“Of course not,” she told investigators. “I told you that three times.”

When one of the investigators expressed disbelief that no one in the car noticed a truck overturning behind them, she recoiled.

“No one said, ‘Oh, the guy behind you ran off the road,'” the girl said. “That would have been a huge deal for everyone. We would have said, “Oh, (expletive), I just caused something really bad,” and then we would have spent the whole night thinking about what to do.