Bobby Stewart of Decatur is a tough trucker, but when he drove up on a crash just south of Ellisville on Wednesday morning, he had an unexpected reaction.
“When I saw the logs, I started to get emotional, and I didn’t know why,” he said, choking back tears, “but when I got up there and realized who it was, then I knew.”
The victim was his first cousin, 42-year-old Ricky Dwight Stewart of Decatur. He was pronounced dead by Coroner Nancy Barnett on the side of Highway 29 after rescuers worked intensely for more than two hours to free him from the mangled, crushed cab of his loaded log truck on New Year’s Eve.
He crashed the southbound log truck after 77-year-old Salvatore Nazzaretto turned wide onto the highway from Spur Line Road to head north, said Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman Brent Barfield. The 18-wheeler crossed the highway and went down the west-side embankment, into a small creek, and the car went down the embankment on the east side of the highway.
The Toyota Avalon that a 77-year-old Ellisville man was driving when he crashed with a log truck.
“I know he left the road to keep from hitting those people,” said Bobby Stewart, 41, “because that’s just the way he was. We were close.”
More than two dozen firefighters, first-responders, medics and law enforcement officials who didn’t know the victim worked feverishly to free him from the wreckage as a Baptist LifeFlight helicopter landed on the highway, ready to take him for medical treatment. Stewart was reportedly responsive for about an hour before succumbing to his injuries.
“We stopped cutting every five minutes or so to check on him, and he was responding appropriately,” Jones County Fire Coordinator Dan McKenna said, “but then he stopped responding.”
The extrication was as complicated as any McKenna had ever dealt with, he said.
“It’s an older truck, built out of steel and aluminum,” he said, adding that newer trucks are built out of fiberglass. “There was a lot of heavy metal to cut through.”
Rescuers used hydraulic extrication equipment to cut through the truck and chainsaws to cut logs that were crushing in on the cab from behind to try to get the driver out. The engine was pushed into the passenger compartment from the front and the logs were pushing into the cab from behind. The victim was knocked to the passenger’s side, trapped between the dashboard and the floor.
“It took us approximately 30 minutes to cut the logs off to get to the metal and begin the tedious work of cutting away the tangled steel and metal that surrounded him,” McKenna said. “The best way I can describe what we were dealing with, is that if you took an aluminum Coke can, crushed and twisted it, then flattened it — that’s what we were dealing with.”
Ellisville firefighters along with volunteers from Johnson, Glade and Ovett were able to cut their way through the back of the cab to get to the victim’s arm so a LifeFlight paramedic could start an IV. But after about an hour of intense efforts by a swarm of rescuers, they realized Stewart had died.
“It’s tough,” rescuer after rescuer said as they climbed the hill to return to their trucks.
The highway was shut down for almost three hours and it took 2 hours and 34 minutes to remove Stewart’s body from the wreckage. The wreck was dispatched at 9:17 a.m. The Jones County Sheriff’s Department along with the MHP were on the scene as was Director Marda Tullos, Rodney Parker and Shane Barlow of the Jones County Emergency Management Agency. EMServ Ambulance and Investigator Wayne Black of the Jones County District Attorney’s Office also responded.
Last New Year’s Day started with a fatal crash on Springhill Road and 2014 ended with the fatal crash on Highway 29. Eight people died in vehicle accidents in Jones County in 2014, including a Moselle toddler who was backed over and killed by her father’s pickup and a Hebron man who fell out of the back of a pickup and hit his head outside of Ellisville.
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