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Oklahoma Highway Patrol officials released dash camera video of a crash on I-40 in Canadian County that sent three people, including a trooper, to a hospital last week.
The video from the afternoon of Jan. 18 shows the trooper out of his vehicle talking to a driver pulled over on the side of the highway near Cimarron Road. The trooper was on the passenger's side of the vehicle away from oncoming traffic when a black SUV crashed into the back of the pulled-over vehicle.
The collision caused the trooper to be thrown into a grassy area near the highway and significant damage to a white SUV. The video then shows the video calling in to dispatch that he and another vehicle had been hit.
"About 1:55 p.m., that trooper radioed in that he had been in a unit collision," Trooper Preston Cox, with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, said after the crash. "The trooper that made the traffic stop was speaking with the person there at the traffic stop, and then a third car came in and struck the person he had stopped."
The trooper is expected to be OK, and everyone involved in the crash was treated and released. Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers are looking into the cause of the crash, and the investigation is ongoing.
"We show this video as a graphic reminder of the consequences of distracted or impaired driving and the importance of the slow-down, move over law," Oklahoma Highway Patrol officials said.