A 30-year-old man was airlifted to a St. Louis hospital for treatment of injuries sustained in a Saturday morning collision involving his pickup truck and a semi tractor-trailer on Route 3 south of Waterloo near Old Red Bud Road.

The crash occurred just outside the Monroe County Electric Cooperative office around 7:15 a.m. Saturday. All lanes of Route 3 were shut down in that area until around 10 a.m.

The driver of the semi, which belongs to S&H Transportation of O’Fallon, Mo., said he was traveling northbound on Route 3 when he encountered a silver GMC pickup heading south in the northbound lane. The semi driver said he tried to avoid a collision by switching to the southbound lane, but the pickup changed lanes again and briefly left the roadway as impact occurred on the passenger side of each vehicle.

The semi then jackknifed and the pickup overturned into a ditch. An Arch Air Medical Services helicopter was called to the scene.

The semi driver was not injured. Fire and emergency responders worked to extricate the driver of the pickup, who was airlifted to a St. Louis hospital. He was conscious and alert at the scene. A person who knows the pickup truck driver reports he is in stable condition at the hospital.

The driver of the truck was Zach Rehmer of Red Bud. He told friends that he broke a vertebrae in his neck that will require a neck brace for six to eight weeks.

See the article in the Jan. 15 edition of the Republic-Times newspaper.