Police said they cited a 23-year-old Idaho woman for drunken and reckless driving after she drove at least three miles in the wrong direction Monday morning on Interstate 5 and crashed head-on with a tractor-trailer, trapping both her and her passenger in her car.
Portland firefighters and paramedics extracted Sequoia Wheeler and her passenger from the car. Neither were wearing seatbelts, said Sgt. Kevin Allen, a Portland police spokesperson.
Wheeler and the passenger were taken to a hospital with serious injuries, Allen said. The driver of the semi wasn’t hurt. Police have not publicly identified the semi driver or Wheeler’s passenger.
“There were several other near misses before the crash,” Allen said in an email. “I would describe it as miraculous that no one died.”
Portland police received reports just before 3 a.m. of a Toyota Avalon traveling south on the northbound lanes of Interstate 5 near downtown Portland. Multiple witnesses said the car’s headlights were off, Allen said.
At one point, Wheeler nearly crashed into a Nissan Altima but the other driver “swerved violently,” hitting a semi and road barrier instead, Allen said. No one was hurt in that crash. Police did not identify the Nissan Altima or semi drivers.
Wheeler continued driving the wrong way down the interstate and crashed head-on with another semi north of Southwest Terwilliger Boulevard, about three miles from where she was first seen driving the wrong way, Allen said.
Interstate 5 was closed for more than an hour as state transportation crews cleaned fluid that had spilled from both vehicles onto the roadway. The road was fully reopened by 9 a.m., Allen said.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Wheeler’s gender and which driver swerved in the first crash. The unidentified Nissan Altima driver, not Wheeler, swerved and hit the semi and road barrier.
-- Catalina Gaitán
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