Trucker charged with two counts of second-degree involuntary manslaughter.
Update: Carl West, the Missouri truck driver whose negligence Columbia Police say caused a fatal crash on 1-70 on April 28, was charged Friday with two counts of second-degree involuntary manslaughter, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Keith Bail said.
If found guilty, West, 61, of Novinger, Mo., faces imprisonment of up to 10 years. Police said West drove a truck into stopped cars in a construction zone on I-70 near the Highway 63 intersection at mile marker 130. --Update posted at 3:38 p.m.
A Missouri truck driver’s negligence caused a crash on April 28 that killed two people and seriously injured a third, according to an analysis of the accident by the Columbia Police Department. A temporary work zone set up by the Missouri Department of Transportation also contributed to the four-vehicle crash, the report says.
The driver of the truck, Carl J. West, 61, of Novinger has not been charged. Boone County Prosecuting Attorney Kevin Crane said his office had the police report for about a week and that he thought there would be a decision “pretty soon” on charges. “I don’t think we’ve really been untimely,” he said.
West has an extensive record of arrests for driving infractions and trucking violations beginning in 1976, including failing to keep his driving log current and falsifying the log. In the narrative of the Columbia police report on the April crash, West admits to intentionally misrepresenting the amount of time he’d slept the night before.
West could not be reached by phone Thursday through his employer, B&C Trucking company in La Plata. The person who answered the phone said West is a driver and was “out in the truck.”
In a subsequent phone call, in which the caller identified herself as a reporter for the Columbia Missourian, the person who answered referred inquiries about West to the company’s lawyer and insurance firm.
The Missouri Department of Transportation was operating a temporary work zone in the area where the accident occurred, near the Lake of the Woods Road exit at about 9 a.m. April 28.
The left lane of traffic was closed and cars were stopped in the right lane when West’s truck came over a low hill near mile marker 130.
West’s truck, which had no trailer, hit a stopped car containing driver Cheryl Card, 54, and her husband Kirt Card, 56, of Lincoln, Neb. Cheryl Card was killed and her husband was seriously injured.
West’s truck then hit a minivan and pushed it under a tractor-trailer driven by Robert Montgomery, 45, of Lakewood, Ohio. The driver of the minivan, John Ferkel, 40, of St. Peters was killed. Montgomery and West were not injured.
The report said that West, Montgomery and Kirt Card did not remember seeing Transportation Department warning signs before they entered the construction zone.
The report also said that despite the
construction and lane closures, the speed limit in the area was not reduced from the usual 70 mph.
Don Hillis, a Transportation Department spokesman, said the department reduces the speed limit in temporary construction zones on a case-by-case basis, and usually only when workers are present.
“When the speed limit does not need to be reduced, we do not want to reduce it,” Hillis said.
He referred questions about the work zone to the Transportation Department official responsible for the Columbia area, but she could not be reached.
Police calculated that West’s truck was traveling at about 58 mph at the time of the crash.
In the police report, a witness who was driving behind West said he did not see the brake lights on the truck before it hit the Cards’ car.
There were no skid marks on the road to indicate that West was braking, according to the report.
In the report, West said he “hit the brakes and tried to turn. I bumped a car and it went one way and then I hit another car and it got between me and another truck. My brakes locked up. I tried to steer but didn’t have no control. It had to be sliding.”
West also said in the report that in the moments before the crash, he “just came over the hump and they were here.”
However, the police found that the landscape near the crash posed no sight obstructions to a westbound driver.