May 30--ST. LOUIS -- A man died after jumping from an overpass into traffic near the Interstate 55 and Interstate 44 split early Friday, landing in the windshield of a tractor-trailer. The trucker was hurt, but not seriously.
It happened at about 8:30 a.m. on Interstate 44 at Lafayette Avenue, police said. A tractor-trailer driver, 47, was heading west on I-44 near the split to southbound I-55 when he saw a pedestrian jump off the Lafayette Avenue overpass.
Capt. Garon Mosby of the St. Louis Fire Department said the 24-year-old man was transported to a hospital and pronounced dead there. He had jumped into the windshield of a moving truck, Mosby said.
Police were not releasing the man's name Friday, saying he had not been "positively" identified.
The truck driver was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries. As workers tended to him at the scene, the trucker has a bloodied face but was able to walk to the ambulance and speak to paramedics. There was a large hole in the upper half of the driver's side of the windshield.
The incident involved a tractor-trailer with markings of Beelman Trucking Co. out of East St. Louis.
The overpass the man jumped from was unclear at first. Authorities say a caller told 911 it happened near a pedestrian overpass marked with the South Seventh Street exit sign, but later police were focusing on an overpass at Lafayette Avenue and putting up crime scene tape there.
The Missouri Department of Transportation said it happened in the left lane of southbound I-55, near the split with Interstate 44. Police temporarily shut down both highways so crews could clear the scene and investigators could do their work.
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