Six people died and 10 others were injured when a pickup truck veered into oncoming traffic and hit a passenger van filled with people in Idaho Falls, Idaho, on Saturday morning.
Among those declared dead at the scene was the van’s driver and five of its passengers, Idaho State Police said in a statement. The pickup’s driver was hospitalized with unspecified injuries, they said.
The nine others hospitalized were passengers in the Chevrolet van, which was struck at 5:29 a.m. on U.S. Highway 20, state police said.
Conditions for the injured were unavailable.
The van is a Chevrolet Express, according to imagery from the scene. It can be equipped to carry as many as 15 passengers, and would have been at or near its capacity at the time of the crash.
The pickup, a Ram model, was heading eastbound near Interstate 15 when it veered left and struck the westbound van, state police said. The reason the pickup went into oncoming traffic wasn’t clear.
At the time of the crash, the weather in Idaho Falls included a temperature of 34 degrees, clear skies and almost no wind to speak of, according to National Weather Service data.
The crash site’s stretch of Highway 20, the longest road in the United States, averages about two fatalities each year, according to the Idaho Transportation Department.
The highway was closed for five hours at Interstate 15 as crews cleared wreckage and police combed the scene, NBC News affiliate KTVB of Boise reported.
Idaho Falls Police and the city’s fire department initially responded to the collision, according to the police department, but Idaho State Police will investigate the cause of the collision, the department said.
