A 75-year-old man from Brooklyn, Wisconsin died Friday morning when his pickup truck rolled over on Interstate 90 near Pukwana, South Dakota, sending his 67-year-old passenger to a Chamberlain hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. The crash happened around 11:35 a.m. near mile marker 273, roughly two miles southeast of Pukwana, as the driver's 2017 Ford F-250 was headed westbound.
According to the Pierre Capital Journal, the truck began drifting toward the median before the driver attempted to correct its path. That correction sent the pickup over the median crossover, where it rolled. The driver suffered fatal injuries, while his passenger, a 67-year-old man from Chaseburg, Wisconsin, was transported to Chamberlain for treatment. The two men's hometowns sit more than 100 miles apart within Wisconsin, according to KBHB Radio, which reported the crash occurred specifically near mile marker 273 in Brule County.
Names of both men have not been released pending notification of family, the Capital Journal's report notes. The South Dakota Highway Patrol, which provides law enforcement services statewide, is investigating the crash.
A Regional Hospital Fields the Emergency
The injured passenger was taken to Chamberlain, home to Sanford Chamberlain Medical Center, a 25-bed critical access hospital located about nine miles west of Pukwana that serves Lyman, Buffalo, and Brule counties, according to information published by Sanford Health. The facility is positioned to handle trauma cases arising from the stretch of interstate that runs through this sparsely populated section of central South Dakota.
This is not the first deadly crash recorded along this specific corridor. A separate fatal crash occurred near mile marker 272 by Pukwana in August 2024, according to a report from DRGNews, placing two fatal incidents within roughly a mile of each other on the same rural stretch of I-90 in just over two years.
Buckled Up, Still at Risk on an 80-Mph Highway
Both occupants of the pickup were wearing seat belts at the time of the crash, the Capital Journal reported. That detail stands out against broader state data: South Dakota Department of Public Safety figures show 59% of people killed in state vehicle crashes in 2025, in situations where seat belts applied, were unbuckled, according to DRGNews. South Dakota law does require adult front-seat occupants to wear seat belts under state code, but it is enforced only as a secondary offense, meaning officers cannot stop a driver for that violation alone, per the South Dakota Legislature.
The posted speed limit along rural stretches of I-90 through South Dakota is 80 mph, a limit state lawmakers raised from 75 mph in April 2015, according to Wikipedia. High speeds on long, straight rural interstate segments can turn a simple lane drift into a severe rollover, as this crash illustrates.
Rural Roads Carry an Outsized Share of Deaths
The Pukwana crash arrives even as South Dakota's overall traffic fatality numbers have been trending downward. Preliminary state figures show 123 traffic deaths across 110 fatal crashes in 2025, a five-year low and a 16.9% drop from 2024, per the DRGNews report. Yet rural roads remain disproportionately dangerous in the state: 2024 Insurance Institute for Highway Safety data found that 80% of motor vehicle crash deaths in South Dakota happened on rural roads, compared to a 41% national average.
Official investigation reports for the crash are maintained by the South Dakota Department of Public Safety's Office of Highway Safety and typically become available online 10 days after an incident involving injury or death. Until then, the identities of both men involved, the precise cause of the vehicle's drift toward the median, and an update on the surviving passenger's condition remain open questions for the Highway Patrol's ongoing investigation.
