NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — It’s been one day since a truck plunged 40 feet off a Norfolk bridge on Shore Drive.
On Thursday, those who were first on the scene said it is a miracle the driver walked away safely.
“It was pretty wild, man,” said witness Josh Ray.
It was something Ray had never seen before — and something he doesn’t want to see again.
“The whole time I was running over there, I was more worried about finding a body,” Ray added.
Ray was working on a boat at Harbor Marine Sales, just yards from the bridge over Pretty Lake in Norfolk.
“We heard tires squealing,” Ray said.
Ray says what he saw next was like slow motion.
“The actual truck was coming over the bridge upside down,” he added. “Before it fell off the bridge it was flipping.”
The two-car crash ended with a truck falling 40 feet into a marshy area. Ray and his coworker took off running.
“Luckily the tide was out,” Ray said. “It wasn’t high tide, or he would have been in the water. As I got to the truck and I was reaching out the guy had come back to and was crawling through his truck.”
Ray grabbed the man and helped him to safety.
“I don’t even know how the guy even walked across the rocks, but about halfway there and he looked at us and he said ‘I’m not alright,’” Ray added.
The man was suffering from a head injury.
“How [he] made it out of that, I will never know,” Ray said.
“If it had been high tide, he would have been in two or three feet of water,” he added. “He would have been underwater.”
Police continue to investigate what caused the crash.