ATLANTA (AP) – An overturned livestock truck spilled a herd of cows onto a highway cloverleaf north of Atlanta on Monday, causing traffic chaos including wrecks that killed several cows and injured a driver.
Sgt. Joe Worsham of the Sandy Springs Police Department said the wreck happened about 3 a.m. Monday on the Cobb Cloverleaf connecting Interstates 75 and 285.
The tractor-trailer carried about 90 cows and about half of them were still roaming in the Cobb County and Sandy Springs area late Monday morning, Worsham said.
“We’re wrangling some cows, that’s what we’re doing,” said Worsham.
Some roads in the area were closed for a time but had reopened late Monday morning, he said.
Sandy Springs police worked four wrecks caused by the wandering cows, Worsham said. No one was injured in any of those accidents, although several cows were hurt and some had to be tranquilized as officers tried to corral them.
Cobb County Sgt. Wayne Delk was quoted by the Atlanta Journal Constitution as saying that investigators do not believe speed was a factor in the crash. The driver of the tractor-trailer that was carrying the cattle was taken to a hospital with injuries.
Cobb County animal control brought a horse trailer to the area and police were putting some of the animals in the trailer, he said.
Most of the missing cows were no longer on the roads.
“We don’t know where they are,” Worsham said. “We’re waiting for people to call and tell us there’s a cow in the backyard.”
A spokesman for the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department did not immediately respond to messages Monday morning about the search for cows on their side of the Chattahoochee River.
It’s the third such accident this year outside Atlanta, and the biggest yet. Smaller herds spilled onto Interstate 75 in May and Interstate 285 in June.
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