SWANTON, Ohio — In the early morning hours of Aug. 15, a light fog settled over northwest Ohio. But by 5:30, that fog had mostly lifted. The skies were clear at Toledo Express Airport and the temperature was climbing toward 60 degrees.
Traffic on the Ohio Turnpike was normal for the early hours, though there were a large number of commercial vehicles getting an early start to the day. The tollway has become an increasingly popular route for big rigs. They now make up 27% of turnpike traffic. More than 1.5 million semis made a turnpike trip in August, an increase of 30% from last year.
Overall, traffic is up by 10% on I-80 so far this year.
“The Ohio Turnpike is the connection between Indiana and Pennsylvania on the northern side of Ohio,” Ferzan Ahmed, the turnpike’s executive director said. “We go through 13 counties, and if you take Toledo, Youngstown and Cleveland out of the equation, we go through a lot of small towns and smaller rural counties. In many of the counties, the economic driver is the Ohio Turnpike.”
To make the tollway more seamless, the Turnpike Commission implemented a new tolling system in April. New plazas were created in the far western and eastern parts of the state. But those plazas have led to confusion among many drivers, generating unexpected invoices in the mail and a surge in volume to the turnpike’s call center.
And on Aug. 15, for the first time, a driver blamed one of those plazas for a fatal crash, a crash that spawned two others and ultimately led to the deaths of four people and injured at least a dozen more.
11 Investigates has compiled more than 100 pages of investigative documents and talked to witnesses and officials to tell the story of Aug. 15, one of the darkest days in Ohio Turnpike history.
“THEY NEED TO CHANGE THE WAY IT WAS DESIGNED”
At 5:34 a.m., Thupten Choedon was alone in the front seat of her Toyota Highlander SUV, driving eastbound on the turnpike in the right lane.
Behind her was her husband, Tenzin Drukgyal. To his right was their 11-year-old daughter, Tenzin Choedon. Next to the girl was her brother, Dawa Norbu, 9.
The family was traveling from Minneapolis to New York to meet with the Dalai Lama, who is recovering from knee surgery in New York City. The family members are from the Tibetan Dhokham Chushi Gangdruk group, which was set up to support survivors of the Chushi Gangdruk resistance. The guerrilla group fought against Chinese forces and helped the Dalai Lama escape Tibet in 1959.
Tenzin is a common Tibetan name that is a tribute to the Dalai Lama, whose given name is Tenzin Gyatso.
As Choedon neared the new Exit 49 toll plaza in Swanton Township, she told investigators that she suddenly slowed from 70 to 50 mph to avoid missing the plaza. Behind her, Hashim Hall, 43, was driving a 2019 Mack Anthem tractor-trailer. When Choedon slowed, Hall could not stop and hit the back of the Toyota, pushing it into a median dividing the E-ZPass and plaza lanes.
The SUV bounced off the barrier, flipped over, and skidded into a ditch to the right of the roadway. Hall’s rig also hit the median and overturned, spilling its hazardous cargo. The materials were identified as sulfuric acid, acetone, diesel fuel and mesityl oxide.
Almost immediately, 911 was notified of the crash. At 5:37, OSHP Sgt. Devon Black arrived first to the scene. Multiple people were lying on the roadway. The three members of the family in the back seat were not wearing seat belts and were ejected. Dawa was dead by the time Sergeant Black arrived. Nearby, Tenzin Drukgyal and his daughter were lying near each other. An adult woman was kneeling between them. The father was declared dead. At 6:16, an air ambulance arrived to take the young girl to St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center with extensive injuries.
Sergeant Black ran to the cab of the truck, where Hall was yelling but was trapped. He would later be extricated and taken to the University of Toledo Medical Center with serious injuries. When a trooper went to UTMC at 8:15 that night, Hall handed him his attorney’s card and refused to give a statement. An OSHP report lists a contributing circumstance to the accident as Hall “following too close.” He has not been charged.
Once the victims were removed from the scene, Springfield Township Fire Department established a 150-foot perimeter around the hazardous release zone. At 7:14, the Toledo Fire Department’s hazardous materials teams arrived. They ordered that all first responders exposed to the hazardous materials be decontaminated and taken to the hospital. Five state troopers, one motor carrier inspector and two turnpike maintenance workers were taken to UTMC, according to an OSHP report. They were all released hours later.
The following day, Trooper Willie Richardson went to St. Vincent to talk with Choedon. She explained that she slowed rapidly because she saw she needed to get to the toll plaza. But then, in her hospital bed, she started to cry, saying she was confused by the setup of the plaza. In a written statement taken by Richardson, she added: “They need to change the way it was designed.”
Her daughter was holding up after multiple surgeries. The family has said her recovery will likely take at least a year. But Choedon had lost her husband and son. Tragically, they would not be the only ones to die that morning.
"I COULD SEE HIM SLUMPED OVER AND THE TRUCK BURST INTO FLAMES"
Twenty minutes after the initial crash, Quinis Hardy was sitting in the cab of his truck, stopped in eastbound traffic near milepost 48, about a mile behind the initial accident.
The tractor-trailers ahead of him were turning on their 4-way flashers as a way to warn trailing traffic that they were slowing or stopped. Hardy did the same.
Dawn was breaking but the air was clear. The pavement was dry.
Hardy looked in his side mirror and saw a Logico Lines rig approaching quickly behind him in the middle lane. The Edison, N.J.-based Logico rig was loaded down with 40,000 pounds of bagged cornmeal.
Hardy thought about trying to switch lanes, but he was afraid the rig would abruptly attempt to go around him. Instead, the Logico vehicle barreled into the back of his Pulli Express rig, which was carrying more than 48,000 pounds of sugar.
The impact forced Hardy into the back of a tractor-trailer, which was then also hit by the first rig. That first rig then hit two more commercial vehicles. Behind the Logico, Anna Miller was driving a Nissan Rogue. Her boyfriend James was sleeping in the passenger seat. Her son, Dax, was in the backseat. The couple’s two dogs, Henley and Davey, were in the far back. Miller heard what she believed was a tire exploding on the Logico. The tire had exploded, but it was because of the impact with the other rigs. She could not stop and hit the back of the Logico.
All three occupants of the vehicle were seriously injured.
Hardy, who was not injured, jumped from his cab to check on the driver of the Logico.
“I could see him slumped over and the truck burst into flames,” Hardy told an OSHP investigator.
Other vehicles were also igniting and exploding, spooking the dogs, Henley and Davey. James told a Toledo Blade reporter that Henley and Davey fled from the vehicle. Henley’s right leg was crushed and he was found alongside a turnpike fence. Davey was eventually rescued by local volunteers and returned to the family after being found five miles away from the scene, James told The Blade.
Four people were injured in the second crash. The driver of the Logico was trapped in his cab and died. His body was taken to the Fulton County coroner’s office, but his identity has not been reported. A possible identity was provided to troopers through the home office of the driver.
Witness Larry Swisher provided dash cam footage from the cab of his tractor-trailer. According to the OSHP report, the Logico rig did not brake before plowing into multiple vehicles. When asked why he believed the driver did not see the stopped traffic, Swisher told a trooper: “There shouldn’t have been a reason. There was no one in front of him.”
"WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON?"
Roughly 30 minutes after the second crash, an eerily similar series of events was taking place in westbound traffic.
Traffic was slowing because of the heavy presence of emergency vehicles in the area. A Pennsylvania-based rig driven by Istam Naimov overtook slowing traffic, slamming into the back of a pickup driven by Nathanial Lewis of Bowling Green. Naimov’s rig then continued on and hit a Honda Passport in the rear.
It was a direct hit to the Passport, collapsing the back of the vehicle, shattering its rear windshield and nearly ripping off the bumper. Twenty-year-old Ajla Vukovic was sleeping in the back seat on the driver’s side and was killed. The occupants were headed to a festival in Iowa.
Naimov hit one other vehicle, Glenn Horvath’s GMC Acadia, before jack-knifing. OSHP obtained dash cam footage from Naimov’s vehicle and charged him with failing to maintain assured clear distance. He also has been charged with aggravated vehicular homicide for Vukovic’s death.
Horvath told 11 Investigates: “The first thing I was thinking was, ‘Where is my wife?’ Her side of the car didn’t get as much damage as mine, but she was OK.”
He described the post-crash scene as chaotic: “Everyone was walking around and seemed like they were stunned, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.”
But for the third time that morning, a commercial vehicle slammed into the back of another vehicle, triggering multiple crashes.
“It was daylight. There wasn’t any fog. It was a great morning,” Horvath said. “There was a half-mile of cars and semis parked in front of us. Our accident was totally uncalled for.”
Beginning with the diversion of traffic at Exit 39 at 5:54, the turnpike lanes were closed for 11 hours. The OSHP report stated that the scene was finally cleared at 9:53 p.m.
Late that night, dozens of agents from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived from Washington to investigate the crash.
The next morning, the board’s chair, Jennifer Homendy, held a news conference in Perrysburg.
"Our entire mission is to determine how a crash happened, why it happened, in order to prevent it from reoccurring," Homendy said.
In the days ahead, the agency will release its preliminary report. A final report will take more than a year to complete.
“We don't speculate. We work with facts,” Homendy said. “We still have a lot to investigate here.”
