APD responds to traffic fatalities on I-40; drunk driver hits APD vehicles

Press release from Asheville Police Department:

At 11:30 p.m. on December 12, the Asheville Police Department (APD) responded to a report of a crash on I-40 east, between Brevard Road and Hendersonville Road. The officers arrived to find that a head-on collision had occurred in the eastbound lanes, and had been caused by one of the vehicles traveling in the wrong direction. The driver of the vehicle traveling in the wrong direction, Joseph Wesley Hyatt, 47, of Hickory, passed away on scene. 

The second driver, Blake Daniel Banks, 19, of Asheville, was transported from the scene in critical condition, but passed away at Mission Hospital. 

The collision remains under investigation by the APD’s Traffic Safety Unit. A preliminary investigation indicates that Hyatt was impaired at the time of the collision, but toxicology results are pending. 

While officers were on the scene of the traffic fatality, a vehicle traveling east on 1-40 ran into the driver side door of a marked APD vehicle at a high rate of speed causing the vehicle to spin around and hit the rear of another APD vehicle. Fortunately neither of these vehicles was occupied at the time of the crash and no officers were injured. The driver of the vehicle, Leann Hendrix Oglesby, 45, of Cosby, Tennessee, was charged with Driving While Intoxicated (DWI). Oglesby was transported to Mission Hospital with non-life threatening injuries.