Witness recounts seeing fiery crash on State Road 66

SPENCER COUNTY, Ind. (WEHT)- A portion of State Road 66 is back open after a crash shut it down for several hours. The Spencer County Sheriff’s Office says a semi transporting corn caught fire after a 65-year-old driver crossed the center line and hit it.

“My adrenaline, you know, started going and it was a matter of what I do next,” says Grant Saylor.

Saylor called 911 after he said he saw the 65-year-old driving erratically.

“They veered off into the oncoming lane. The semi really could not really move and there was a head-on collision. I was about 50 years behind the vehicle. The semi-trailer actually flipped over and slid towards me, to about five feet in front of me,” says Saylor.

Saylor says the semi-diver was able to get out of the cab. When he did, Saylor helped him to safety, minutes before the cab burst into flames.

“I just kind of helped him to the back of my truck and we kind of got out of there. That way, if there was some kind of explosion form the fire of the semi, we were a safe distance away. But you could hear the tires popping from the heat,” Saylor says.

As the flames grew taller, Saylor says he saw corn raining down.

“Corn basically covered my entire car,” says Saylor.

He says the corn was everywhere, and was even stuck underneath his car. Officials shut down the road for several hours to clean up the mess.

“State Road 66 is a very busy road and when you have to shut a road down like that, especially on Friday, you’ve got work traffic and school traffic. it is a lot of teamwork to get things moving,” says Spencer County Sheriff Sherri Heichelbech

The sheriff says the drivers were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

“We are very lucky that the semi driver did a good job trying to evade, so it was not actually a head-on,” says the sheriff.

“At the end of the day, you know God was on both of the drivers’ sides,” Saylor says.

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