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SLATINGTON, Pa. (AP) — Police say a section of electrical conduit fell from a Pennsylvania Turnpike tunnel, crashed through the windshield of a tractor trailer and killed a New Jersey trucker.
State police said Thursday the truck driven by 70-year-old Howard Sexton III of East Greenwich Township continued on for a mile after the accident about 6 p.m. Wednesday inside the Lehigh Tunnel's southbound lanes.
Police say Sexton, hit in the head by the pipe, was already dead when troopers and turnpike maintenance workers reached his truck on the shoulder of the highway.
Traffic is moving in both directions in the northbound lanes of the turnpike's Northeast Extension. The southbound lanes are closed.
A turnpike spokesman says it's the only tunnel in the system in which electrical conduit is directly above drivers. In older tunnels, the pipes are located in a parallel maintenance tunnel.
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