Truck driver charged with fleeing scene of injury crash

An Indiana State Police trooper said he responded around 8:15 p.m. Sunday to the local eastbound lanes of Intestate 94 where he found a 2015 Ford F250 with a Mississippi license plate stopped in the right lane with significant front-end damage.

The driver, who was trapped in the crashed vehicle and complaining of “everything” hurting when asked about his condition, reportedly told the officer he ran into the rear of a semi-trailer truck that was breaking extremely fast.

A medical helicopter was called to fly the injured driver to South Bend Memorial Hospital for care after he was extricated from his vehicle, police said. The trooper said it was 11 degrees below zero at the time he arrived at the crash scene and the wind chill was 26 degrees below zero, which he said could have helped extinguish the flames reported earlier on the vehicle.

Noticing the semi-trailer truck in question was no longer at the scene, police, using a description provided by a witness to the crash, began a search and located the damaged truck with a Texas license plate at the nearby Love’s Travel Stop in Michigan City.

The driver, Gabriel Ramirez Guzman, who had a Mexican commercial driver’s license and was in the parked vehicle, reportedly told police he heard a “pop” while driving on the highway and thought a tire on his vehicle had blown. He said he drove to the truck stop and claimed he did not notice the extensive damage to the rear of his trailer, police said.

“Based on the amount damage to the Ford and the amount of damage to the Wabash trailer, it is not plausible that Guzman would not have noticed the collision occurred,” police said.

A blood draw was taken from Guzman to check for signs of intoxication and he was taken to the LaPorte County Jail on a felony count of leaving the scene of a crash resulting in serious bodily injury, records show.

Police said they later learned the injured driver suffered a fractured hip, fractured shinbone, fractured wrist, damage to his gums, bruised eyes, several cuts on his face and body, fractured elbow and bruised internal organs.

Police were also told the driver’s “left leg was completely broken from the hip to the toes and that he would need surgery involving metal being placed into his leg to try to fix it,” according to a charging document filed the LaPorte County prosecutor’s office.