18-wheeler recovered from San Jacinto River

Officials removed an 18-wheeler from the San Jacinto River on Saturday, two days after the truck plunged into the water after the driver swerved to avoid an accident scene.

The body of 60-year-old Steve Martinez of San Antonio was recovered Friday from the submerged truck.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said the trucker may have performed “a last heroic act” by maneuvering his vehicle to avoid three people on the side of the road after an accident early Thursday.

“It’s very much a miracle that no one else was hurt,” the sheriff said.

A deputy had been interviewing an 18-year-old driver and 23-yearold passenger involved in an accident around 3:30 a.m. Thursday when Martinez swerved away from the Chevrolet and went through the guardrail, crashing into the river.

It took more than two days for Galveston-based TnT to pull out the truck, which was filled with cargo and submerged in mud. The company used a large barge with a crane to lift the truck.

“It’s been a very complex crash from where the truck landed.

The truck was basically jackknifed with the front portion of the truck in the mud and silt that was there so the compartment was completely filled with mud,” Gonzalez said in a video posted Friday.

Complicating the matter, the truck landed almost on top of the perimeter of a highly toxic Superfund site, Gonzalez said.

“We did not want to disturb the caps that are in place there that would then perhaps spill into the water on the San Jacinto River,” the sheriff said.

Gonzalez said the Interstate 10 bridge’s barriers aren’t adequate to prevent a big rig or other vehicles from going over the side. He recounted that in May, a 4-year-old girl in a sedan was killed when a semi-truck crashed into the vehicle and pushed it over the left concrete barrier of the bridge. The sedan fell into the dry riverbed of the river.

Gonzales said applauded responders’ efforts to clear the complicated scene.

“We are relieved that we’ll be able to bring closure to a family and they can have a proper burial,” he said.