It was raining money on a New Jersey highway, and traffic came to a halt as drivers scrambled to pick up the cash.
A Brink’s armored truck carrying stacks of cash was involved in an accident on Route 3 just outside Met Life Stadium in East Rutherford on Thursday, with another car rear ending the truck and jarring open the back door. As the New York Daily News reported, the accident led to cash spilling out all across the highway and prompted many drivers to get out and grab as much as they could.
One driver who said she was too scared to get out and participate was able to capture a video , showing drivers running across the four-lane highway and snagging the bills as the wind blew them across the road.
“People literally getting out of the cars to get money,” the shocked driver said. “Never in a million years.”
The driver showed the damage to the Brink’s armored truck after it was struck, showing how the impact of the collision jarred loose the back door and allowed the cash to spill out.
Some cars and trucks were able to crawl past the scene of the accident, slowly weaving around the drivers who had gotten out and were collecting the loose cash.
As one witness said, it was a big cash grab for those willing to risk the open highway.
WATCH: Drivers grab money off highway as Brink truck spills cash in New Jersey. https://t.co/ZNfIcWzM9F
— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 13, 2018
“There were $100 bills, 20s, 50s,” Betsy Richards, a passenger on a New Jersey Transit that was at the scene of the crash, told the New York Times . “It was in all different denominations, but there was a lot of it and it was scattered all about.”
The video showed that some drivers wandered a considerable distance through the slowly moving traffic, grabbing fistfuls of bills along the way.
No joke…. it’s SNOWING money! Accident involving a Brink truck on Route 3 in East Rutherford sends cash flying. ? ?? @ABC7NY pic.twitter.com/zASqW6idG1
— Nick Amador (@NickAmadorTV) December 13, 2018
But not everyone collecting the cash was selfish. The New York Times report noted that several of them gathered the bills and handed them back to the Brink’s employee, who was trying to collect as much as he could and put it back into a white bag. Some other people handed the cash they found to police officers when the arrived.
In all, about $6,000 was returned, police said. They were note sure how much had fallen out of the truck in total.
The East Rutherford Police Department said that it would be reviewing video of the cash grab that many drivers had posted on social media in an attempt to identify those who took the money.
