Crash Kills 500 Piglets, More May Be Euthanized — ‘There’s Quite A Few Dead Pigs,’ Says Official


There was a scene of carnage and confusion in Ohio Monday night: A semi-truck driver hauling 2,200 piglets from South Carolina to an Indiana farm overturned and crashed on the side of the road in Ohio, spilling his cargo and killing up to 500 animals.

Hundreds of piglets escaped into the wilderness, some may need to be euthanized due to injuries suffered in the crash, and others have been captured and taken to county fairgrounds nearby to recover.

Reports are a bit confusing and numerous, but first — the crash: the Dayton Daily News, WDTN, WLWT, and WCPO have provided different details about the circumstances that led to and followed the incident. Evidently, the driver was traveling westbound when he lost control, allegedly from navigating a curve too fast. This may have caused the semi to roll, and then crash into a guardrail and come to rest in an embankment, loosing screeching, terrified piglets all over the roadway.

The driver has been given a ticket for failure to control a motor vehicle. And though he survived the crash without a scratch, his passenger, his fiancée, suffered injuries that required treatment at the hospital.

Now, for the piglets.

In total, 2,200 of them were in the semi. Initially, it was estimated 300 to 400 piglets were killed, but that number may be as high as 500. Fire Chief Dean Fox simply said: “There’s quite a few dead pigs.”

Immediately after the crash, the driver said up to 400 were still inside the truck. About 1,500 were captured in the woods near the road and taken to fairgrounds to be cared for. Some, sadly, need to be euthanized due to stress and injuries, but local stations didn’t estimate how many — some may be put down at the fairgrounds.

Finally, an untold number escaped into the night, most likely never to be seen again, Fire Chief Dean Fox said.

“There’s quite a few pigs that got out and ran from the accident. They’re in the woods. I don’t think we’ll ever get all of them, I really, really don’t. We’ll try as hard as we can to retrieve all of them, but we probably won’t retrieve all of them. I can’t say what will happen to the pigs.”

But locals have been notified to call the cops if they see one of the errant, likely shaken up, piglets in their yard.

“We’ll try to take care of it,” Fox added.

The terrified piglets that managed to survive the crash were corralled by volunteers, including firemen, farmers, and park rangers. They will be picked up by a company out of Cleveland. Farmers brought their trailers to help haul them away.

“The help from local farmers meant a lot,” Fox said. “If we didn’t have the farmers here with their livestock trailers, there’d be pigs every place still.”

[Photo Courtesy Jeff J Mitchell / Getty Images]

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