Knoxville semi crash kills 10 horses
A tractor-trailer crash Sunday night on Interstate 40 East killed 10 of 30 horses in a trailer.
The crash, which happened just after 8:30 p.m. just west of Exit 398, Strawberry Plains, involved two semitrailers, one of which was carrying the horses. It closed all but one lane of 40 East, backing up traffic for miles until it was cleared just after 1 a.m., said Tennessee Department of Transportation spokesman Mark Nagi.
The Knoxville Police Department and several other agencies, including the city’s and county’s animal control units, responded. On call with the University of Tennessee Veterinary Medical Center was Dr. Meggan Graves, who said eight horses were dead when she arrived, and she euthanized two others at the scene.
From looking at the rest of the horses, she said they appeared to be in good condition, with only superficial wounds and no noticeable broken bones.
Because it was too dangerous to transfer the injured and traumatized horses to another trailer there on the interstate, the truck and trailer were pulled to Mascot Stockyard and the horses unloaded there, according to Knoxville Police Department.
The horses were being hauled by Rotz’s Livestock to its facility in Shippensburg, Pa. The company, owned by Bruce Rotz, routinely buys horses at auction to sell for slaughter in Canada, where it has long been legal to slaughter horses and sell the meat for human consumption. Earlier this year, the United States Department of Agriculture approved the operation of U.S. slaughterhouses to produce horse meat for human consumption, though that meat technically can’t be sold in the U.S. for human food.
Knoxville Livestock Auction Center in Mascot had a horse auction Saturday, but it was unclear whether those horses were from that auction.
Rotz’s truck was driven by Luke Hershberger. The driver of the flatbed was Jovan Declared of Baldwin, La. Neither was injured.
KPD said in a release that two semitrailers were traveling east on I-40 in the right lane when a flatbed semi stopped on the shoulder of the road began to merge into the lane. While the first semi was able to make a sudden lane change to avoid hitting the merging truck, the second semi, which was carrying the horses, was unaware of the merging semi and was unable to change lanes in time to avoid colliding with the flatbed truck, KPD said.
In 2013, 30 horses died in a trailer fire after the Rotz Livestock semitrailer hauling them caught fire on an interstate in Lisle, N.Y. Driver Clarence Phelps told police then that he stopped when the truck caught fire but was unable to extinguish it. State police said that fire was sparked by a leak in a 130-gallon fuel tank.