Police say a 16-year-old teenager was behind the wheel of a tractor trailer that collided with a freight train on Thursday.
The incident occurred around 3 p.m., near Blunt, South Dakota, on Thursday, August 17th.
According to police reports, 16-year-old Colt Brink was behind the wheel of a 2000 Kenworth tractor trailer, headed east on U.S. Highway 34, hauling two trailers filled with wheat. Brink was unable to bring the 136,000 pound loaded tractor trailer to a complete stop as he approached the active rail road crossing, and crashed into the Rapid City Pierre & Eastern Railroad train. He suffered serious injuries in the crash and was rushed to Avera St. Mary’s Hospital in Pierre, South Dakota.
“The impact caused the trailers to dump a large amount of grain into the cab of the semi, pinning the driver in the vehicle. A member of the Blunt Fire Department and a person from Hayti provided medical care to the driver. When the semi started on fire, the two were able to pull the driver from the vehicle,” South Dakota Highway Patrol spokesman Tony Mangan told reporters.
The boy’s sister, Jessica Blow, shared the following unreported information about the incident on the popular ‘Truckers Had Enough E-Magazine’ Facebook page:
For those wondering what REALLY happened… Colt was hauling wheat and had come to the Blunt hill, where he knew train tracks were at the bottom, so he started to slow down at the top of the hill by the cemetery, continuing to slow down he had come over the second lip of the hill where he was then able to actually see the train and the lights started going. All in all he was trying to stop 136,000 lbs (including wheat lbs and truck and trailer itself) from going down a hill…where he thought “I can either get this stopped or slowed down enough and hit head on or I can try to roll it…”
He had gotten the truck slowed down but there was no stopping 136K lbs, so he had hit the second locomotive between the 2nd and 3rd axels knocking the first axel of the track where 800 bushels of wheat had blown through the sleeper of the truck pinning/burying him inside for a short amount of time where Mr. Chris Schaffer (an EMT in town for a meeting) and an EMT of Blunt luckily had been behind Colt and where there in time to pull him out before the truck went up in flames.
They had then preformed triage on the scene for Colt until the ambulance got there where they loaded him conscious and sped to Pierre where we had found out he had a broken femur, 5 broken ribs, a broken wrist, 2 lesions on his head,as well as other minor scrapes throughout his body, and air behind his lung that they had to release (all on his left side). They had done surgery for his head lesions and his femur where he then sat in ICU until Friday night where they thought the best treatment for him was in Sioux Falls when he was then airlifted to Sioux Falls… When he was asked if he remembered what had happened he repeatedly said “I tried to stop! I tried to stop! I tried!”
My family and I would like to thank everyone for the love and support through everything we’ve been through thus far!
According to the South Dakota Capital Journal, charges are currently pending against the 16-year-old.
There were two men aboard the freight train, neither of which were injured in the accident.