A van towing a trailer rolled into a ditch along northbound Interstate 65 in Clinton County early Thursday morning, killing one passenger who was thrown from the vehicle. The crash happened just before 6:30 a.m. near mile marker 157, not far from the State Road 28 exit, after the trailer being pulled behind the van came loose and sent the driver spinning out of control.
The 2012 Chevrolet Express van was being driven by 27-year-old Alfredo Hernandez Manuel of Indianapolis, who was pulling the trailer in the right lane when it disconnected, according to WRTV. Losing control after the disconnect, the van veered into a ditch on the east side of the interstate and rolled onto its side. Hernandez Manuel was not injured, but a passenger who was not wearing a seatbelt was ejected during the crash and pronounced dead at the scene by the Clinton County Coroner’s Office, per investigators cited in the same report. Investigators are withholding the deceased passenger’s identity until family members can be notified.
Dispatch logs reviewed by a local scanner page indicate that responders were first alerted to the wreck around 6:28 a.m. through an automatic vehicle crash-detection system, a technology built into many modern smartphones and vehicles that flags severe deceleration or impact to 911 dispatchers, as described on Facebook. Crews arriving on scene reportedly located the van’s headlights glowing from the tree line before freeing four occupants from the wreckage. The same post notes that a language barrier initially complicated efforts to confirm whether a fifth passenger was unaccounted for, prompting responders to request a thermal-imaging drone search before locating the final person.
A Key Interchange Turns Deadly
The crash site sits near the State Road 28 interchange at mile marker 157, a major access point linking I-65 to Frankfort, Indiana, according to WTHR. SR 28 functions as the principal east-west arterial connecting Frankfort to the interstate corridor, making the stretch a heavily used transition point for drivers moving between highway and rural traffic. Drivers use the interchange to move between I-65 and local roads.
Multiple agencies assisted Indiana State Police at the scene, including the Clinton County Sheriff’s Office, the Frankfort Police Department, the Clinton County Coroner’s Office, the Colfax Fire Department, and Clinton County EMS. The Indiana State Police Crash Reconstruction Team is now investigating the crash, though it remains unclear whether the trailer’s disconnection stemmed from a hitch failure, a missing safety chain, or another mechanical issue.
What Indiana Law Requires for Towing and Restraints
Indiana law requires every trailer drawn on public roads to be fitted with safety chains linking it to the towing vehicle, so the trailer stays attached even if the main hitch or coupler fails, according to Big Loads. Those chains serve as a backup connection between the trailer and towing vehicle. Whether that equipment was properly in place on the van involved in Thursday’s crash has not been addressed publicly.
Indiana also enforces a primary seat belt law under Indiana Code 9-19-10-2, meaning officers can pull over a vehicle solely because an occupant isn’t buckled in, without needing another reason, as outlined by Wagner Reese, LLP. Statewide crash data from the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute identifies failure to wear seat belts as one of four leading factors in fatal collisions, with restraint usage consistently lower in non-urban areas of the state. National data compiled by Sokolove Law shows that seat belts cut the risk of fatal injury in passenger vehicles by as much as 60 percent and substantially reduce the odds of full ejection during rollovers — the exact scenario investigators say played out in Thursday’s crash.
No citations or charges connected to Thursday’s crash have been announced, and the cause of the trailer’s disconnection remains under review by the Crash Reconstruction Team. The identity of the passenger who died has not been released as investigators continue working to notify family.
