Driver Faces Charges After Tar Falls On Turnpike

STEVENSVILLE, Md. (WJZ) -- A Maryland man faces charges after police say his truck spilled a thick substance onto the busy Pennsylvania Turnpike. The incident stranded and damaged hundreds of vehicles.

Weijia Jiang explains what happened.

The company that owns the truck is based out of a complex in Stevensville. The driver is on administrative leave as he faces charges in Pennsylvania.

At the height of the Thanksgiving travel rush in the middle of a heavy rainstorm, as many as 300 vehicles got stuck in a dark, dangerous goo that caused widespread damage.

"It was real slippery. I pulled over; it was like three inches of tar," said Stanton Hubbard.

"This is just unacceptable. They should have shut the freeway down. It don't come off easy, nothing. I don't even know how I'm going to get where I'm supposed to go," said Kenneth Miller.

Police say a tanker truck oozed roofing asphalt on a 40-mile stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

Now the driver, 50-year-old George Delaney of Glen Burnie, has received two citations for failing to secure a load and failure to obey a state trooper.

The trooper says after he pulled Delaney over, he ordered the truck stay at a service area until it could be inspected. But the next morning, Delaney and the truck were gone.

The harm it caused was not.

"I have never been so damn scared in my life with my wife before. We had no idea if we were gonna get hit. It was so slippery, the car was like on ice. It got to the point we felt like with all this tar and everything, it was shaking the car pretty much like you were in an earthquake," said Bob King.

A spokesman for the company that owns the truck, MTS Express LLC, says Delaney is a 20-year law enforcement veteran with a clean safety record. MTS is working with victims to file insurance claims.

The owner of MTS issued a statement to WJZ to say they continue to investigate how this happened and have not put all the pieces together yet.

Federal documents show MTS has a safety record that is above the national average.