Moments after allegedly veering into the lane of a tractor-trailer and setting off a major crash, a Duluth man told a 911 operator the truck had hit him.
“A truck hit me!” Howard Silverstein said in the 911 call released Friday. “I was the car he hit.”
But according to Sandy Springs police and videos from the Sept. 25 crash, Silverstein’s Kia Sorento and the tractor-trailer collided because the Kia veered into another lane —and into the path of the tractor-trailer. The impact caused the tractor-trailer to swerve right and hit the fuel tanker, police said. And the collision between the two trucks sent both vehicles over a concrete barrier and onto Ga. 400, according to police.
The massive wreck blocked one of the busiest interchanges in metro Atlanta for about five hours on a Friday afternoon. But no serious injuries were reported.
Silverstein, 64, was charged with failure to maintain lane, police said Thursday. And in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Silverstein blamed the wet roads for causing him to bump into the tractor-trailer and apologized for the mistake.
“I bumped into the wheel of the Publix truck,” Silverstein said. “Then the world seemed to come to an end.”
Silverstein wasn’t the first person to call 911 after the wreck, according to the operator that took his call. Emergency crews were already on the way to scene on the report of a truck going over the barrier, the operator said. Silverstein again repeated that he had been hit.
“He hit me,” Silverstein said in the call. “That tractor-trailer hit my car then.”
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