2 face charges after rock thrown from overpass injures trucker in Monteagle
GRUNDY COUNTY, Tenn. — A truck driver is recovering and two people face charges after Monteagle's police chief says the pair threw a rock from an overpass for "fun."
The incident happened Wednesday night a little after 8:30 p.m. Central time at the Trussell Road overpass.
Monteagle Police Chief Virgil McNeese says an 18-wheeler going under the overpass was surprised with a rock right through her windshield.
The rock bent the driver's steering wheel, and she suffered cuts on her head and arm from the shattered windshield glass. She was able to make it to the next exit ramp down the road. She has since been treated and released from the hospital.
Chief McNeese says it took about 3 hours between when the crime happened and when police made two arrests.
The perpetrators left bootprints at the scene.
McNeese said officers went to the home of a juvenile who had been involved in a previous incident involving thrown rocks. His bootprints matched the bootprints from the scene.
But that juvenile told officers another man, 20-year-old Phillip Thrasher, was responsible for throwing the rock.
Officers went to Thrasher's home, and discovered the second set of bootprints from the scene matched his. Thrasher told investigators the juvenile was the one who threw the rock.
Investigators arrested both Thrasher and the juvenile, and charged them with reckless endangerment. They are now in the Marion County Jail. Chief McNeese says the district attorney may bump those charges up to aggravated assault.
Chief McNeese tells NewsChannel 9 that if the rock had been thrown two seconds later, it would have hit the truck driver in the face, and she would have been dead.
The consequences were deadly recently after a similar incident in Nasvhille. Joe Shelton Jr. died after concrete crashed through his windshield on the morning of November 20 at around 4:54 a.m. while was driving on Interstate 24. Police have made no arrests. On Wednesday, the family increased the reward for information leading to an arrest to $10,000.
