Background: The aftermath of a tanker-truck crash that killed five people in Springfield, Ill. Inset: Footage of a car believed to have been connected to the crash (WCIA/YouTube).
A teen driver from Ohio has apparently admitted to setting off a chain of events that ended in a fatal tanker crash and a toxic chemical spill in central Illinois.
Five people were killed when a semitruck carrying anhydrous ammonia in Teutopolis, in central Illinois, on Sept. 29, 2023. The tanker jackknifed when it veered to the right in an apparent attempt to avoid a collision when another vehicle tried to pass it on U.S. 40, around 110 miles northeast of St. Louis, at around 8:40 p.m. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the tank hit the trailer hitch of a vehicle parked just off the road, leaving a 6-inch hole in the chemical container.
About half the tanker’s 7,500-gallon load spilled, forcing the evacuation of around 500 people. The fatalities were due to exposure to the chemical, which is normally used by farmers to add nitrogen to soil. It is also used as a refrigerant in large buildings.
Within days, investigators determined that a passenger vehicle had tried to pass the tanker shortly before the crash. Now, in a newly-released federal report, the driver of that car — a 17-year-old girl — appears to have acknowledged that her attempt to pass the truck may have played a role in the tragedy.
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The teen, who is not identified by name in the report, said in an interview on Oct. 4, 2023, that she was behind the wheel driving west toward Teutopolis at the time when she passed the truck because, in her words, it was going “super duper slow.” Her mother and brother were passengers, and according to her, while they were rattled by the fact that they were almost in a head-on collision as the teen was passing the truck, none of them had any idea about what had happened behind them after they returned to their lane.
That changed when she watched dashcam video from the truck.
“Did that happen?” she asked investigators, according to the interview transcript. “Oh, my gosh. Because again, I’m telling you I passed one or two trucks on there. So is that what happened? Is it literally — does it flip after I pass the guy?”
The investigators point out that the driver didn’t actually make contact with the tanker.
“Of course, but he did go off the road after I passed him, the truck?” the driver asked the investigators.
The transcript relays the teen’s discovery of her apparent role in the crash in real time.
Q. This is Route 40. There’s the no-passing zone sign. See that?
A: Oh, s—.
Q: Okay?
A: Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Yep, totally my bad. Wow.
Q: Okay.
A: Holy s—.
Q: So we’ll watch this again.
A: No, you don’t have to. It was totally my fault.
When asked if she was aware that the truck ran off the road following her passing it, she insisted that neither she nor her family members had any idea.
“None of us knew that this truck went off the road,” she said. “I’m finding this out now.”
“I mean, I thought for sure I saw his lights and it looked normal,” she also said. “Like I didn’t see anything that I was like, oh, this is abnormal, I should like see what’s going on behind me and like something’s wrong.”
The teen’s mother had heard reports of a crash on U.S. 40, but she said they didn’t realize it was connected to the truck they had previously passed and the “close call” with an oncoming vehicle.
Q: Was your night ruined after that close call?
A. No. Because I thought I just passed a truck normally and everything was fine. I didn’t know he went off the road. I mean, logically looking back on it, I would’ve thought he could brake. But obviously trucks can’t stop quickly, so I — it looks like it was my fault from the video.
Q. Do you think it was your fault?
A. Now I do, but back then I had no idea. Of course I think it’s my fault now. How could I not? And like five people died. Who else died? Okay, so the truck driver died —
Q. The truck driver didn’t, didn’t die.
A. Oh, really? Well, some people in a house did, right? They’re totally innocent.
Q. When did you find out about the people that died in the house?
A. The news story. It was like a dad and two kids, right?
Q. Yeah.
A. I’m so sorry.
Q. You’re fine.
A: No, it isn’t fine. What the hell? Some people died, right? You said five people?
Q. We don’t have to go into that right now.
[Trooper]: We don’t have to —
[Teen driver]: I need to know. Oh, my God.
According to the transcript, the driver struggles to comprehend what happened.
“I don’t know how we would not have noticed that,” she says. “Literally, that still makes no sense to me. You’d think it would like make a big noise or like we’d see the headlights going off the road or like some explosion like — you would think we would’ve known, but we didn’t know.”
Throughout the interview, the girl acknowledges that she is a relatively new driver and that in the past she “had times when I just don’t use good judgment in judging like distances and whether I have enough time for something.”
She also expresses regret when asked if she would have done anything differently.
“I’m not sure how to answer that,” she says. “I mean, it, it sounds like I made a shitty decision on the road that for whatever reason seemed completely fine to me in the moment, and it turned out not to be fine at all and I killed five people and now I’m — yeah, of course I’d do that differently. Are you kidding me?”
The five people who died as a result of the toxic spill were Teutopolis resident Kenneth Bryan, 34, and his children, Walker Bryan, 10 and Rosie Bryan, 7; Danny J. Smith, 67 of New Haven, Missouri; and Vasile Cricovan, 31, of Twinsburg, Ohio.
So far, no charges have been filed in the crash.
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