An Ohio Department of Transportation bridge inspector was killed Monday morning, Nov. 9, when a semi-truck struck her inside the Interstate 70 reconstruction work zone in Zanesville, according to the Ohio State Highway Patrol and ODOT.
Jennifer Donley, 45, of Lancaster, was struck at about 8:09 a.m. near mile marker 154 on westbound I-70, near the Maple Avenue off-ramp, according to the Patrol’s Zanesville Post as reported by the Zanesville Times Recorder. She was pronounced dead at the scene. The truck, a Freightliner driven by Brian Carter, 54, of Indianapolis, was traveling westbound. Carter was not injured, the Times Recorder reported.
Donley was a bridge inspector working in the active I-70 reconstruction project and had been with ODOT for four years, joining the agency as a bridge inspector in 2022, according to a release from ODOT Director Pamela Boratyn reported by the Zanesville Times Recorder. The initial call, around 8 a.m., was for a pedestrian struck by a semi-truck, according to the Muskingum County Emergency Management Agency as reported by the Times Recorder, and the county coroner was called to the scene.
Westbound I-70 was closed from the Maple Avenue area to the Adamsville Road exit for approximately four hours while troopers investigated, backing up traffic through the corridor, and the lanes reopened around 12:30 p.m., according to the Times Recorder.
The crash remains under investigation by the Zanesville Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and no charges had been announced in the reports published Monday. ODOT issued condolences through Director Boratyn’s release, the Times Recorder reported.
Monday’s crash was the second fatal I-70 work-zone case in Ohio news this fall. In Columbus, a Hilltop man was indicted Oct. 20 in the February hit-and-run death of Jordan Thomas, a 25-year-old Kokosing Construction worker struck while working on bridge decks and ramps on I-70 near Downtown, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
Drivers through the Zanesville reconstruction zone are urged to slow down and watch for workers as the multi-year project continues. What happens next rests with the Patrol’s investigation, which will determine how the truck came to strike Donley inside the work zone.
Photo: David Brossard, CC BY-SA 2.0