Serious Accident Kills Two and Injures 20 Others

Two people were killed and 20 others seriously injured in an early morning crash on Interstate 169 in Golden Valley, the Minnesota State Patrol said.

Just before 7 a.m., two tractor trailers going north on I-790 collided with each other and started a chain reaction crash. According to Golden Valley Police, a total of four tractor trailers and 14 vehicles were involved in the crash.

“One of the tractor trailers was hauling diesel fuel”, said Sgt. Albert Wei of Golden Valley Police. “We were very lucky that the tractor trailer didn’t roll over or dump any fuel”. The front end of the tractor trailers were damaged when a car hit it. The drivers of the tractor trailers weren’t hurt according to Wei.

Two people driving cars were killed in the crash while 20 others were hurt, four of them serious. They were taken to local hospitals. The four seriously injured drivers have life threatening injuries, said Golden Valley Fire Chief Tony Sullivan.

In the 18 years he’s been with the department, Sullivan said this accident looked like a war zone, with bodies laying along the road, people covered in blood, emergency workers running up and down the road helping the injured, and sirens wailing in the background as fire trucks and ambulances were arriving on the scene.

Wei said the officers on the scene were having a difficult time identifying which vehicle belong to people and trying to identify who was the driver and passengers of the vehicles involved.

Ambulances and fire trucks from Golden Valley and surrounding communities had to be summoned in to help with the accident. Those patients were taken to Hennepin County Medial Center. A helicopter also had to be called in for the most serious injuries. Those patients were taken to Memorial Hospital in north Minneapolis.

The interstate in both directions were closed throughout the remainder of the morning. Wei didn’t know when the interstate would reopen to traffic.

The names of the victims were not released.