2-Year-Old Sole Survivor After 9 Die in Wisconsin Highway Crash: ‘Tearing This Community Apart’

A 2-year-old boy is the lone survivor of a crash in Wisconsin that killed nine people, including members of an Amish community in Virginia.

Preliminary reports say a tractor-trailer was traveling eastbound on State Highway 95 on Friday when it entered an intersection and struck a van traveling northbound on County Highway J, according to Chief Deputy James Hirsch of theClark County Sheriff’s Office.

The semi, which was hauling milk, swerved to avoid the van that had turned into its path at the intersection, witness Nathaniel Jahn, a former marine, told theMilwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The driver of the semi and eight of the nine people inside the van were pronounced dead at the scene,Hirsch said in an update.

The toddler was thrown from the van when the crash occurred, Jahn told theSentinel. The Neillsville man pulled the boy from the wreckage but was unable to save the woman next to the child.

“I think God put me there for a reason,” explained Jahn, who laid a cross at the crash site on Sunday.

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He was expected to be released from the hospital to family members, per the paper.

Seven of those in the van were members of an Amish community in Virginia, theSentinelreported. They were in Wisconsin to visit family at the time.

“I still had confidence in him, we’d still go places and stuff like that, I mean, he was my best friend,” Stout explained.

More than 1,000 people are expected to visit the Amish community in Burke’s Garden to mourn those lost in the collision,Thompson Valley Fire and Rescuesaid.

As of Monday afternoon, nearly $13,000 has been raised through aGoFundMe campaignfor the victims’ families.

source: people.com