Animals taken to Springfield
By Joanne Degnan, The Packet Group
ROBBINSVILLE State police are investigating a predawn crash on the southbound side of the NJ Turnpike on Monday that involved two tractor-trailers and a pickup truck towing a horse trailer with four animals inside.
The driver of the Dodge Ram, Anthony Soward, 43, of Willow Springs, Missouri, was trapped for more than two hours before rescuers were able to free him, according to state police. The cab of the pickup was wedged beneath one of the tractor-trailers, which needed to be raised with cranes to extricate the victim.
Mr. Soward was flown by medical helicopter to Capital Health Regional Medical Center in Trenton, according to Trooper Christopher Kay. Hospital spokesman Don McNeil said Tuesday that Mr. Soward was in good condition and expected to be discharged later that day.
The animals inside the trailer three horses and a donkey suffered minor injuries and were taken to High Chapperal Farm in Springfield Township, where they received veterinary care.
”They’re doing OK, just a few bumps and bruises basically,” farmer Larry Mandella, of Chapperal Farm, said Monday afternoon. A veterinarian who came to examine the animals said they were all going to be fine, he said.
Mr. Mandella said state police asked him to bring an empty horse trailer to the accident scene Monday morning so that when the trapped animals were extricated from the damaged trailer he could take them back his farm for temporary safekeeping. It was not immediately clear who owned the animals or where they were being taken when the turnpike accident occurred.
”So I drove up there with a trailer, they tranquilized them, the firemen cut the gates away (on the damaged horse trailer), and we got them out,” he said. Although the animals were “a little shook up” by the crash and rescue effort, they were all resting comfortably at his farm afterward, he said.
The accident occurred at 5:14 a.m. in the southbound lanes just south of Exit 7A, when a tractor-trailer drive by Jon Betz, 39, of Kinderhook, New York, hit the rear of the horse trailer being towed by Mr. Soward, Trooper Kay said. The impact caused Mr. Soward’s pickup truck to crash into another tractor-trailer in front of his vehicle, a rig driven Ronaldo Climaco, 36, of Elizabeth.
Mr. Betz was treated at the scene and Mr. Climaco was transported to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital-Hamilton hospital for treatment of minor injuries, state police said.
The turnpike was able to reopen all lanes to southbound traffic at 10:20 a.m., state police said. The cause of the accident remains under investigation and no summonses had been issued as of Tuesday, Trooper Kay said.

