Autopsy finds Va. truck driver killed in NC crash was drunk. Missing woman not found.
A Virginia truck driver was at four times the legal limit for being impaired when he crashed his tractor-trailer rig into an Orange County bridge in September, according to an autopsy released Wednesday.
Danny McNeal, a 51-year-old driver with Moore’s Trucking in Virginia, was carrying a load of frozen chickens when his truck ran off the right shoulder of Interstate 85 early around 2:12 a.m. Sept. 14, veering toward a guardrail and back toward the highway before crashing into the N.C. 86 bridge, law enforcement and EMS records showed.
His truck flipped over, bursting into flames before it stopped on the right bank under the bridge. Troopers estimated that McNeal was going 65 mph — the legal speed limit — when he hit the bridge.
The family of Alyssa Taylor, 25, thinks she was in the truck when it crashed and also was killed, but the N.C. Highway Patrol has officially determined that only McNeal and his dog Blu were involved in the crash, Patrol spokesman Sgt. Christopher Knox has said.
A toxicology report released by the N.C. Medical Examiner’s Office on Wednesday afternoon showed McNeal had a blood-alcohol content of 0.32 — four times the state’s legal limit for impairment — when he crashed.
His official cause of death is listed as multiple blunt force injuries from the crash, although 60% of his body was burned in the resulting fire, the autopsy states. His right hand was clutching a “red, metal bottle cap with no identifying markings,” it said.
The report also noted that McNeal was seen on video surveillance footage buying alcohol at a convenience store along his route that night, and that he was traveling with another person. However, only one set of human remains was identified at the scene and in the autopsy, it said.
Missing woman had texted her mother
Taylor’s family has continued to look for clues to her whereabouts, filing a missing person’s report with the Accomack County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia and traveling to Orange County after the crash to look for clues at the scene, in the wreckage and at a Sampson County landfill where the truck’s cargo and debris was buried.
A mother of two from Oak Hall, Virginia, texted her mother on Sept. 13 to say she was riding with McNeal on his run from Delaware to North Carolina and would be back in two days, her aunt Lori Taylor has said. But on Sept. 19, Taylor’s mother learned about McNeal’s crash while returning home from a trip to Florida.
Accomack County sheriff’s investigators have said that, based on the evidence they have collected, it does appear that Alyssa Taylor was in truck at least until it reached Henderson, about a 40-minute drive north of Hillsborough.
Investigators also reviewed body camera footage from an Exmore police officer who spoke with McNeal and an unidentified woman in his truck about parking the rig on the side of the road before they left Virginia Sept. 13. Taylor’s family has identified the woman’s voice as Taylor’s, police have said.
A GPS tracker in McNeal’s truck and Alyssa Taylor’s cell phone both pinged the same location near Oak Hall, Virginia, where he was supposed to pick her up, and also pinged the same location near Henderson hours later. However, video footage retrieved from highway cameras only showed McNeal in the truck.
Taylor’s family also provided authorities with a blanket and a flip-flop sandal retrieved from the wreckage that they said belonged to the woman, as well as an earring that her family said she often borrowed from her mother. Her mother found the earring in a storm drain under the bridge while combing through rubbish a few weeks after the crash.
In late September, Virginia authorities ran out of fresh leads, Accomack County Sheriff’s Lt. Joshua Marsh previously told The News & Observer,
McNeal’s family declined to comment when contacted previously by The N&O.
