MIAMI COUNTY, Ind. (WANE) A prison inmate van collided head-on with a PT Cruiser early Tuesday in a crash that sent eight people to hospitals.
Officers from the Indiana State Police, the Miami County Sheriff’s Department, and the Bunker Hill Police Department were called just after 7:30 a.m. Tuesday to a stretch of Miami County Road 800 South near Angling Road on a report of a crash there. Police arrived to find a 2004 Chrysler P.T. Cruiser and a 2007 Chevrolet passenger van badly damaged in the roadway.
A preliminary crash investigation showed the PT Cruiser, driven by 41-year-old Zackariah Birdsong of Kokomo, was headed westbound on C.R. 800 South when it crossed the centerline into the eastbound lane for an unknown reason, state police said. The passenger van, an Indiana Department of Natural Resources vehicle taking Miami Correctional Facility inmates to Mississinewa Lake State Park for maintenance work, tried to avoid the crash but the two vehicle ultimately crashed head-on near the centerline, police said.
Birdsong was airlifted to a Fort Wayne hospital with life threatening injuries. Hullett was taken by ambulance to a Peru hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Six of the nine inmates in the van were taken to hospitals – two by air – with differing degrees of injuries suffered in the crash. All were deemed non-life-threatening, police said.
