Dump truck overturns onto car in Wake County

APEX, N.C. — Rescue workers had to free a motorist trapped in her car for nearly two hours Monday afternoon after a dump truck overturned on it.

Troopers said that Edmund Theodore Jackson, 52, of New Haven, Conn., was driving a 1999 Freightliner dump truck west in the 1300 block of Davis Drive shortly after 4 p.m. when it ran off the right side of the road.

Jackson overcorrected, and the truck crossed the center line into the path of an oncoming 2007 Honda Civic.

The Civic's driver, Kara Walden Benton, 25, of Holly Springs, swerved onto the left shoulder to avoid the dump truck, but the truck struck the Honda, shifting its load of gravel and sand and causing the truck to overturn.

The vehicles came to rest in Betty Burnette's yard off the left shoulder of the road.

Burnette said when she first approached Jackson, he kept talking about two other people.

"I said, ‘What people?’ And he said, ‘Those that are under my truck.’ And I was just shocked,” Burnette said.

Kara's Benton passenger – Chad Michael Benton, 26, of Holly Springs – managed to get out, but she was trapped, authorities said. Crews used two tow trucks to lift the dump truck off the Honda.

“That is a lot of weight to fall on a car,” Apex Fire Chief Mark Haraway said.

Kara Benton kept talking throughout the ordeal, and an emergency worker managed to slip under the truck and give her emergency care.

"We had a paramedic in complete safety gear in the vehicle with her the entire time,” Dr. Brent Myers, Wake County EMS director, said.

Sky 5 footage showed her placed on a stretcher and taken to an ambulance shortly after 6 p.m.

“We saw this as a miracle, that God answered their prayer,” Burnette said.

Kara Benton was airlifted to WakeMed, where she was listed in critical condition Monday evening. Chad Benton was treated and released from WakeMed. Jackson was not seriously injured.

Troopers said that the wreck was under investigation and that charges were pending against Jackson.