CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — A dangerous stretch of U.S. Route 58 in Chesapeake turned deadly Friday morning as a two-vehicle crash killed a man and spilled diesel fuel from a tractor-trailer on the highway, keeping eastbound lanes closed for nearly eight hours.
All lanes of U.S. 58 near the Hampton Roads Executive Airport reopened just before noon Friday.
Chesapeake Police have not filed any charges at this time, although the crash team is still investigating. Any future charges “would depend on the investigation and what it finds,” Chesapeake Police spokesperson Det. A. Robare said.
Right before the lanes reopened, there was a backup of almost 11 miles, according to VDOT.
According to officials, Chesapeake police were dispatched to U.S. 58 near the 5100 block of West Military Highway at 4:10 a.m. for reports of a crash between a tractor-trailer and a white sedan.
Officers arrived to the scene and found 64-year-old Cecil James Freeman, the driver of the sedan, dead. Chesapeake police said Freeman was from Corapeake, North Carolina.
An investigation revealed the driver of the tractor-trailer was traveling west and was attempting to make a U-turn, when Freeman struck the tractor-trailer.
The crash caused the fuel tank of the tractor-trailer to rupture, spilling large amounts of diesel fuel on the road. Workers with Chesapeake Public Works had estimated that the eastbound lanes could remain closed until around 2 p.m. to allow hazmat cleanup of diesel fuel that had emptied out of the tractor-trailer, but they fully reopened by noon.
The left turn lane at Bisco St on U.S. 58 westbound was also closed while crews completed the hazmat cleanup.
Tammy Robinson was stuck in traffic for three hours.
“I have been in traffic ever since and I try to go around because I’m not familiar with the Suffolk area, so anyway I’m tired; I was scared I might fall asleep.”
She was afraid she would run out of gas.
“I had, like, three miles to go,” she said. “I was scared.”
Robinson was saddened to hear someone had died.
“Oh that’s so sad,” she said. “I didn’t even know all of that. We didn’t know what was going on. I was just stuck.”
Most had no idea what was happening.
Police said the driver of the tractor-trailer remained on the scene.
Steven Woods was supposed to be at Lyon Shipyard at 7:30 a.m., but never made it.
“I told them I couldn’t make it today,” Woods said. “There’s traffic, but the boss man wasn’t hearing, but I guess he looked at the news that it was backed up. I took the day off. I couldn’t make it in, so I took the day off. I couldn’t make it in.”
Robinson, who had just three miles to go to get home, was tired, and you could hear it in her voice,
“I’m so tired,” she said. “I got off work. I’m ready to go home to get into bed. I’m just like, I’m tired.”
Randy Forehead from Suffolk filling up after a long hour wait.
“I had a place to be at a certain time, and that is shot,” Forehead said. “I’m sorry to hear someone died. That’s terrible.”
Robinson said she was backed up to the Main Street Suffolk McDonald’s.
And then there’s Jennifer Shrader, who said she and her neighbors had complained about the cut-through along Route 58 because there has been too much traffic for years.
It so happens that, as she was talking to us, a tractor trailer sat for 10 minutes trying to cross from the cut through to Bisco Street.
“There’s so much traffic,” Shrader said. “He can’t get across … I don’t know how he is going to get across. You see all this traffic. It is not safe to do that, so all these cut throughs need to be shut off so they can’t come across or make a U-turn, or even to go straight. … They already shut down the little cut through up Route 58.”
As the trucker revved up to race across the eastbound lane of 58, Shrader was concerned he wouldn’t make it.
“Look, there he goes,” Shrader said. “He’s trying to edge out, and there’s traffic coming and look, ‘Oh my God,'” she screamed as the trucker races across Route 58 with on-coming traffic coming at him.
It was scary to watch.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Shrader said. “He got tired of waiting. The cut through should be closed down. They don’t need to be doing this.”
