Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
ST. GEORGE — A momentary lack of concentration on the road nearly resulted in a Utah Highway Patrol trooper being hit and killed Saturday, according to the UHP.
"This could have ended very tragically. If Sgt. (Danny) Ferguson had not seen him coming, he probably would have been struck by this vehicle," said UHP Lt. Shawn Hinton.
About 2:30 p.m., Ferguson had pulled his patrol car onto the shoulder of I-15 near St. George to remove a giant box with lighting fixtures that was lying in the road and blocking a lane. Ferguson's overhead red and blue lights were on, and traffic behind him had plenty of room to move over, Hinton said.
But a 59-year-old St. George man driving a pickup truck that was hauling a trailer came up on the slowed traffic too quickly. He hit his brakes, causing the trailer to jackknife, Hinton said.
"There wasn't any reason whatsoever that he should not have seen that the traffic ahead of him was slowing down," he said. "For whatever reason, this gentlemen was not paying attention."
Ferguson, however, who was standing outside his vehicle, was paying attention and ran out of the way just as the pickup truck and trailer smashed into the rear, passenger side quarter-panel of his patrol car.
"If his back had been turned, he very likely he would have been hit," Hinton said. "This could have been a fatality just because someone wasn't paying attention."
The trooper was not injured. The driver of the pickup truck was cited for unsafe lane travel.
Hinton said it only takes a split-second for someone to get in trouble for not paying attention to the road.
