Henry County – An early morning crash on Interstate 70 sent one adult to the hospital in Richmond and a 4-year-old to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. Local first responders were called to I-70 eastbound in the area of the 133-mile marker, east of the New Lisbon exit, just before 6:30 a.m. this morning for a report of a two-vehicle crash with a child ejection.
Indiana State Police Master Trooper Aaron Edwards arrived to find a four-door Chrysler in the roadway and a Toyota SUV in the median. His preliminary investigation showed that the driver of the eastbound Chrysler, Jerry Hinton, age 29 of Evanston, Illinois, lost control of his car while changing from the left lane to the right lane. The car went into a spin, hitting the guardrail off the south side of the road twice before coming to rest in the roadway, according to a press release from Sgt. John Bowling.
The driver, in checking on his 4-year-old backseat passenger, had just unbuckled him from his restraint when an eastbound Toyota SUV driven by Patrick Skelly, 61, of Indianapolis, then struck the Chrysler, causing it to spin again in the roadway, this time ejecting the 4-year-old backseat passenger out into the ditch on the south side of the road, Bowling said. Four-year-old Malachai Hinton was transported to Riley by medical helicopter with non-life threatening injuries.
A front-seat passenger in the Chrysler, Shonnon Hinton, 26, was taken to Reid Health in Richmond with a leg injury. Neither driver was injured. The crash had I-70 eastbound restricted to one lane for nearly two hours, causing a several mile back up at times. Edwards was assisted in his investigation by several troopers from the Pendleton District, as well as the Henry County Sheriff’s Department.