MANCHESTER TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- A traffic stop turned into traffic stopped after a police-involved shooting on I-83.
Police said a state trooper pulled a driver over for a routine traffic stop on the interstate. The driver decided to flee, and the trooper was dragged down I-83 in York County. The trooper ended up shooting the driver, who was identified as 25-year-old Rasheem Singletary of Virginia.
PENNDOT Spokesman Fritzi Schreffler, said Tuesday's incident involved almost the entire width of the highway.
She said, "The officer who made the traffic stop, you pull over on the shoulder in a safe place. When the guy took off, then that would've crossed two lanes of traffic. There was the crash that was involved. Him trying to get up alongside the concrete median. So in that case you have a rather wide debris field."
Schreffler said in those situations, state police are in charge and can sometimes handle blocking off roadways themselves. PENNDOT officials wait until they are called by state police to act. And in this case, they were needed.
"We were called immediately when they realized they were going to have to do a rather large construction scene. And we had a lot of debris out there. So we helped determine, you know we're going to close it from this exit to this exit," Schreffler said.
The exits from Strinestown to Emigsville were blocked off southbound and only one lanes were open northbound. And if drivers were in between those exits after the roads were shut down, they were stuck.
"What we can try to do is back people out of that. The tractor trailers are the ones who really suffer at that point because there's no backing them up on the highway and trying to get them out of it. So for them, it's pretty much shut down and you have to wait," Schreffler said.
That wait lasted more than five hours. But Schreffler said drivers need to be patient, especially after a major crash like this one.
"We had a fatality. We had a serious incident. We could have had two fatalities on that. But the people who are working on the scene, they need to be safe because they're paying attention to what's going on there. So it's asking for a little bit of empathy and a whole lot of patience," she said.
The trooper who was involved in the shooting was released earlier Wednesday.
If you need to avoid roads that are blocked off, PENNDOT advises you be aware of message boards on the highways and dial 511 for more information on traffic.