‘I saw taillights, and I saw a puff of smoke and a semi went sideways.’

Lloyd and Betty Dotson’s pickup barely missed a deadly four-vehicle wreck on Interstate 10 on Wednesday. It wound up in the median of the highway, stuck in the mud.

Lloyd Dotson was the first person to approach the mangled Ford Expedition in which four people died, and he talked with the Sun Herald about what happened.

The Dotsons were hauling a camper. They were headed home to Lumberton, Texas, after a week in Gulf Shores, Alabama.

They had crossed the 4-mile-long bridge over the Pascagoula River, heading west, when Lloyd Dotson saw what appeared to be the beginning of the wreck.

“I saw taillights, and I saw a puff of smoke and a semi went sideways,” he said. “I didn’t have anyplace to go.”

He maneuvered around the wreck and wound up in the median without hitting being hit by any vehicles.

Two 18-wheelers and the Expedition were on the road, and a red Nissan pickup had gone into the woods north of the interstate.

Dotson’s pickup was surrounded by wreckage but was not damaged.

They were grateful, but it was still a difficult situation for them.

There were four people in the Expedition, and Dotson said two were still alive when he got there and one of them was talking, but they both died shortly after.

Dotson said it was especially hard, because they had a son, Mark, who had been killed in a car wreck 10 years ago. The I-10 wreck brought back memories, they said as they waited for tow trucks to pull them out of the median.

This story was originally published May 24, 2017 at 2:02 PM with the headline "‘I saw taillights, and I saw a puff of smoke and a semi went sideways.’."