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INDOT workers, police escape injury in Saturday drunk driver crash
REELSVILLE — Several emergency workers are fortunate to be uninjured following an early-morning Saturday incident on Interstate 70.
As INDOT crews were attempting to clear trees from I-70 near the 31-mile marker, the car went careening past a Putnam County Sheriff’s Office SUV and into the back of a state highway dump truck.
Neither the deputies in their vehicle nor the INDOT workers in front of the truck were injured.
However, Giovanni S. Toscano, 22, Houtzdale, Pa., was preliminarily charged with misdemeanor counts of reckless driving, operating while intoxicated and refusal to identify.
At 4:07 a.m., Deputy Robert Soilleux and Reserve Deputy Trevor Lee were assisting INDOT workers with a tree across the road while also investigating the crash of a car into the fallen tree.
As the two officers were inside Soilleux’s vehicle with the emergency lights activated, Toscano’s 2011 Toyota Avalon approached at a high rate of speed, missing the patrol vehicle by only a couple of feet before plowing into the back of the INDOT truck, which also had its emergency lights activated.
Upon making impact, Toscano’s vehicle bounced off the truck and into the center median, backward, where it came to rest after colliding with the center barrier.
Parts of the front bumper landed just feet away from the state highway workers, who were working in front of the highway truck for their protection.
The impact to the state highway vehicle, a 2015 Freightliner 108SD, knocked the plow off the front as well as moving the entire vehicle forward and causing extensive damage to the rear and undercarriage.
Soilleux, who was assisted at the scene by Lee as well as deputies Josh Clark and Josh Deal, reported that Toscano smelled strongly of alcoholic beverage, had red bloodshot and watery eyes and slurred his words.
Soilleux further stated that the driver was “unfriendly and uncooperative from the start and was only concerned with finding his cellphone that he reported he had dropped during the crash.”
Toscano refused to answer questions about the crash and more than once attempted to flee on foot, repeatedly saying, “I plead the fifth. I’m not telling you anything, and I’m not refusing.”
To prevent him from walking into traffic, the driver ended up being detained until medics arrived to check him out. He was then transported to the hospital, where a blood draw was performed.
Several motorists also reported they had observed Toscano for several miles, complaining he had been driving recklessly, unable to maintain his position, running off both sides of the road, swerving wildly at varying speeds and cutting off other vehicles.
“Another reminder to please never drink and drive,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post. “The number of individuals hurt or seriously killed from drunk driving is increasing. In our country alone, one person dies every 39 minutes from drunk driving.”