According to official and witness accounts, a larger passenger vehicle and a commercial truck collided Wednesday night, killing one person and injuring at least one more. Traffic near Muddy Gap was halted for hours.
Dan Langely, a cross-country commercial truck driver, was among the first to witness the aftermath of what he described as a head-on collision on Wyoming Highway 220 near the Muddy Gap Junction in Carbon County.
According to scanner traffic at the time, this occurred shortly before 7 p.m.
“First of all, it was hailing. “There was about 4 inches of hail on the ground right before I got to Muddy Gap,” Langely recalled as he descended from South Pass.
He recalled that it had also rained in Muddy Gap.
When Langley turned left, he encountered four vehicles flashing their lights to warn him of a problem, he stated.
‘Absolutely’ A Head-on
Nobody was alerting the radio airwaves, however.
“I’ve got a CB radio (since two of the warning vehicles were semitrucks), but nobody sent me anything,” Langely told me.
Then he noticed three vehicles pulled over to his right and four to his left, with people attempting to learn more about the circumstances.
He noticed a black minivan or small SUV with severe front-end damage, a missing motor, and deployed airbags.
“It looked like it took the brunt of the hit on the passenger side,” according to Langely.
On the northbound side of the road, in the ditch, sat a semitruck pulling a tanker. It had front-end damage but was still upright, Langely recalled.
The evidence “absolutely” points to a head-on collision, he added.
He drove up the road to get phone service, so he could dial 911.
“You need to get people coming,” Langely said in his interview.
Just before 7 p.m., the dispatcher began describing the scene on the scanner as a vehicle accident with a female screaming, “she can’t get out.”
The dispatcher requested a life flight and stated, “So far, we have one victim.”
Lawmakers and others leaving the Wednesday meeting of the legislative Minerals, Business, and Economic Development Committee in Casper were stuck on the highway until after 11 p.m., according to on-site observer Joey Correnti, who was returning home to Saratoga from the meeting.
Two Wyoming Highway Patrol officials did not immediately respond to Cowboy State Daily’s requests for comment Thursday.
Ground, Air, and Fire
Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken confirmed in a Thursday morning statement that one person died on the scene. Another vehicle occupant sustained injuries.
Deputies, Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers, emergency medical personnel, air medical crews, and fire departments all responded, Bakken wrote.
“Out of respect for the family, the identity of the deceased will not be released at this time,” he wrote in an email.
Bakken stated in a subsequent phone call that the WHP is the lead agency in the case.
