One man was killed and both of the area’s major highways were closed for hours on Wednesday in two separate rollover incidents.
A cement truck traveling eastbound on I-68 rolled over shortly before 1:30 p.m. near exit 7, killing its driver. The truck stopped in the median.
The driver worked for Solid Rock Concrete LLC and was a good employee, according to manager Jim Cook.
Cook said he considered the victim his buddy. The driver was headed to a housing development in Cheat Lake.
The victim’s name was not released Wednesday.
The West Virginia State Police are investigating the accident.
Police told Cook the suspected cause of the rollover is a blown tire, he said.
Victoria Marano was traveling west when the cement truck rolled and debris from the truck struck her car. She heard a loud noise before she saw the truck coming at her with debris flying.
“All I saw was it coming at me,” she said.
Marano decided to gun it and was worried the debris would cause her injury since her windows were down. She said she’s glad she accelerated, but there was a hole in her red Kia Sportage near the rear driver’s side tire.
The rollover also prompted a second collision because of traffic slowing down.
Richard Hilleman said as soon as he and his niece crested the hill all they saw were taillights.
His niece was driving a Dodge truck and rear ended a white Subaru Impreza driven by Cody Liddle, Liddle said.
Eastbound traffic was closed for roughly 20 minutes while the medical examiner traveled the wrong way down I-68 to get to the accident.
Emergency crews had to cut through the cabin of the truck to get to the driver.
Westbound traffic was initially restricted to one lane then closed when emergency crews began cleaning cement off the road. Cook said the cement was wet and if it hadn’t been cleaned up it would have hardened.
More details were not available in time for this report.
As of 4 p.m. I-68 westbound was still closed and traffic was backed up to mile marker 15, according to scanner traffic.
Traffic on I-79 northbound was also delayed for hours due to a dump truck rollover shortly after noon.
That driver was taken to the hospital and both northbound lanes were closed.
According to WV 511 both lanes were opened at 3:21 p.m.
EDIT: Due to reporter error, the driver’s company was misreported. The error was corrected 10:11 a.m. Sept. 26.
