Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 17, 1994 TAG: 9408170093
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: IRONTO LENGTH: Medium
Langford, a tow-truck driver for Flint's Service Center in Roanoke, was running a few minutes late on a call to assist a motorist at the rest stop. Minutes earlier, about 7:30 p.m., another tow-truck driver was killed when her Chevrolet Silverado was rear-ended by a tractor-trailer and the two trucks exploded, sending a ball of flames hundreds of feet into the air.
The identity of the driver of the tow truck and her reason for being at the rest stop had not been determined by state police late Tuesday.
It took rescue workers more than an hour in a steady rain to remove the woman's body from a mass of mangled metal.
The driver of the tractor-trailer, Melvin E. Vargas, 22, of Hialeah, Fla., managed to get out of the cab of his truck. He escaped serious injury.
State Trooper A.C. Henderson said an initial investigation showed that the victim died almost instantly when her vehicle was struck by Vargas' truck and then slammed into another tractor-trailer that had stopped in the wrong lane of the rest stop.
Henderson said the driver of the other tractor-trailer, Jose Estrella, 32, of Brooklyn, N.Y., missed the rest-stop entrance for heavy trucks and had started to enter the lane for passenger cars when he realized his error and stopped.
Vargas hit the tow truck when it stopped behind Estrella, according to Henderson.
Vargas and Estrella, who also escaped injury, were driving trucks for Dynamic Express Inc. in New Jersey.
After the wreck, Vargas stood crying beside Estrella's truck. Estrella put his arm around Vargas to try to console him.
Larry Conner and his wife, Lib, of Virginia Beach had called Flint's for a tow truck when their mini-van broke down as they were making their way home from Radford.
"We thought the tow truck was the one sent to pick us up," Larry Conner said. "There was a big crash, and the tow truck started burning right away. [Estrella] and a another man tried to put the fire out, but both trucks were engulfed in flames in seconds."
Henderson said he was charging Vargas with reckless driving and Estrella with failure to obey a highway sign.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB