Georgetown I-35 crash: 3 hospitalized after crash involving semi, 8 vehicles

Georgetown police are investigating a crash on I-35 involving a semi-truck and eight vehicles.Police responded to the crash near the 257-mile marker before 7 a.m. on Wednesday. The southbound lanes of the highway remained closed until just before 2 p.m. VIdeo shows several cars that went off the roadway, including the 18-wheeler.Georgetown police say eight vehicles were damaged in the southbound lane and one vehicle in the northbound lane was damaged when it was struck by a tire.Three people were transported to the hospital, including two with serious injuries."I know that caused a lot of, you know, travel stress to people, and for that, we do apologize but hopefully everybody understands like taking care of the people involved in that crash is our first priority," said Georgetown Police Chief Cory Tchida.Tchida said they’re still very early on in the investigation, but he thinks it started with a two-vehicle crash. The eighteen-wheeler tried to maneuver around it, but likely because of the slick roads from the morning rain, couldn’t stop in time, which created a chain reaction of crashes."A lot of people are saying they just know that they got hit, and then they hit somebody so we are not exactly certain at this moment in time what the actual chain of events were," said Tchida.It is not clear which vehicles the injured were in.As traffic stood still along I-35 on Wednesday morning, Tevin Earthman and his mom embraced."I'm good, I'm good," said Earthman. "I got a sore knee, and a sore neck."He was on his way to work when he was hit in the crash along the southbound lane of I-35 and Leander Road."You see it a lot on the news, and you just hope it doesn't happen to you one day," said Earthman. "But one day it might. One day it will, and you just hope the impact on you isn't that bad."Earthman and another driver on the road, who asked to remain anonymous, shared what they saw with FOX 7 Austin."Two cars sideswiped each other, and that caused the initial accident and everybody was kind of able to come to a stop but the eighteen-wheeler didn’t have enough time," said Earthman."It just came out of nowhere cause I saw the crash in front of me happen so I was looking at that and then the big rig sideswiped me," said another driver.This all comes after two deadly crashes on I-35 last month.One person died, and three others were injured in a ten-vehicle pile-up on I-35 near RM 620 in Round Rock.Just south of that, five people died in an 18-vehicle crash in North Austin, which also involved a semi.According to the most recent data available from TxDOT, seven fatal crashes occurred on I-35 in Williamson County in 2023. There were 14 in Travis County that year."I wouldn’t say it’s very common, but I know there’s a lot of, recently, you know, as recently as yesterday, there’s certainly a lot of public interest," said Tchida.Tchida teaches driver safety to police departments across the country. His best piece of advice to drivers is to put away any distractions while on the road.