Police were called to a fiery, multi-vehicle wreck in the early morning hours Sunday (February 28), when three drunk drivers collided with one another.
It happened at State Highways 11 and 32 in Mount Pleasant, around 2:47 a.m., according to a Mount Pleasant Police Department press release.
Responding officers found all three of the vehicles in the northbound lane of State Highway 32. The found “all (vehicles) sustained heavy damage, and one vehicle was fully engulfed.”
The car that was ablaze, however, didn’t have a driver or passenger trapped inside. Instead, the driver fled the scene on foot and was later tracked down at Ascension Hospital, according to the press release.
Investigators determined that the driver of a southbound Ford F250 on Highway 32 drifted into the northbound lane. Despite trying to swerve out of the way, the driver of a GMC Yukon SUV collided head-on with the pickup truck.
Shortly after that accident, the driver of a northbound Chevy Equinox also it the truck. The “severity of the collision” caused the Yukon to “burst into flames,” according to the Mount Pleasant Police Department.
All three drivers were intoxicated, including the driver of the blazed Yukon, who fled the scene on foot and was later tracked down at a local hospital.
Police charged the three drivers on suspicion of OWI:
- Kraig Herbrechtsmeir, 56, of Racine, who is also charged with driving the wrong way on a divided highway
- Christopher Sanchez, 33, of Racine
- Herbert Aguirre-Lopez, 45, of Kenosha
Sanchez and Herbrechtsmeir face their first OWI charge, and Aguirre-Lopez faces his third, according to the release.
Officials had to keep the highway for hours as the police department, the South Shore Fire Department and the Racine County Highway Department investigated the three-car pile-up. The scene reopened around 5:29 a.m. Sunday, according to police.
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