A driver on the road during a fatal head-on collision between two transport trucks is sharing a first-hand account of the accident in the hope that the affected families can get more information about what happened. Tony Champion lives in British Columbia but was driving through Bishop’s Falls on the evening of June 22nd. He was behind one of the trucks that would be involved in the accident and remembers seeing the oncoming truck getting closer and closer. “This other truck came over the top. It seemed to be doing fine, then I start to see the truck go across the lanes and go right into the Day & Ross truck that was in front of me,” Champion told CBC News. “He just hit the other one and crawled right over it.” The head-on collision killed both drivers and closed the highway for several days as debris had to be cleared from the road. Champion said he believes a medical emergency could have caused the crash, saying the truck that veered onto the center line seemed fine until a sudden change in its trajectory. An official cause has not been determined. “It looked like the truck just came straight over the hill and just fell like gravity… It was horrible, really horrible,” he said. “There was no way anyone could survive that. It was just like a bomb going off… It was just a big crack and bang. Then it went quiet for a bit and then all of a sudden it burst into flames and exploded. It was terrible. Terrible.” A tractor-trailer burns on the Trans-Canada Highway near Bishop’s Falls on June 22. (Submitted/Name not provided by CBC) Champion said he was asked to tell his story to help affected families learn more about what happened. His brother-in-law died in a 2016 car accident that had no witnesses, leaving his family without answers about the accident. “In the morning you wake up and it’s the first thing you see. It’s something you have to process and try to overcome,” he said. “What I wanted to do was make sure the families know that this truck went over the hill and had some kind of emergency.” Read more from CBC Newfoundland and Labrador
