Trucker dies after hitting bull
Staff writer
A Katy, Texas, man died after his box truck struck a bull Saturday night on US-50 west of Nighthawk. The truck swerved into a ditch and struck a tree.
Emergency responders pronounced Italo Antequera dead at the scene.
A person at nearby Coneburg Bar & Grill heard the crash just before midnight — as well as a loud, honking horn — and called in the accident, Sheriff Jeff Soyez said.
The first dispatch about the crash came in at 11:57 p.m. At that point, Antequera was unconscious in the driver’s seat of the truck, which Undersheriff Larry Starkey described as a “fair-sized truck” similar to a moving truck. At 11:58 p.m., a caller told dispatchers that the driver was pinned in his vehicle and that the caller had been unable to get him out.
Scanner traffic about the crash is sobering.
At 12:03 a.m., Hillsboro ambulance attendants en route to the scene asked Peabody firefighters “Have you started compressions?”
“Negative,” they responded. “We can’t get him out of the vehicle. He’s pinned up against the tree head-first. We’re attempting to try to pull the truck away from the tree right now so that we can get to where we can actually get to him.”
Then, at 12:06 a.m., firefighters reported: “We have no pulse at this time.”
They attempted to arrange for a helicopter ambulance, as Hillsboro ambulance, 20 minutes away, was the nearest Marion County unit. However, Life Safe advised that a helicopter was an hour and 10 minutes out.
Soon after, a deputy sheriff located about 100 yards away “a large bull that the truck struck.”
Five sheriff’s officers — including Soyez and Starkey — responded to the accident.
The cleanup “took most of the night,” Soyez said.
No other vehicles were involved, he said.
Hillsboro ambulance was asked two hours after the accident to return to the scene and administer a blood test on the driver’s remains
Results to determine whether alcohol or drugs were involved are not yet available, the sheriff said, adding that such tests are routine for fatality accidents.
Starkey put the bull down by shooting it. Soyez would not release the name of the owner. An accident report was not available Tuesday. The deputy who is compiling the report was off Monday and Tuesday.
Soyez didn’t know how or why the animal had escaped from its pasture, which it shared with several cows.
The bull “was in good fences,” Soyez said.
“It was a full-grown, big bull,” Starkey said, estimating it weighed 1,800 to 2,000 pounds.