A pair of tow trucks assist with a tractor-trailor that that left the roadway on U.S. Highway 101 near Laird Road west of Port Angeles on Wednesday. Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News

A pair of tow trucks assist with a tractor-trailor that that left the roadway on U.S. Highway 101 near Laird Road west of Port Angeles on Wednesday. Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News

Tractor-trailer veers to miss pickup; lands in ditch on Highway 101 west of Port Angeles

PORT ANGELES — A tractor-trailer veered to miss a pickup truck and ended up in a ditch on U.S. Highway 101 at Laird Road on Wednesday morning.

No one was hurt in the 11:12 a.m. wreck, the State Patrol said. Contrary to earlier reports, there was no collision.

A fuel spill was cleaned up by emergency responders at the scene, said Trooper Russ Winger, spokesman for the State Patrol.

Cleanup and removal of the vehicles were completed at about 1:15 p.m., Winger said.

The driver of the pickup, Reece C. Lausche of Port Angeles, was cited for negligent driving, Winger said.

Lausche, no age available, was driving a Ford F-350 pickup truck on Laird Road approaching the Highway 101 intersection, failed to stop at a stop sign, overshot the intersection and instead halted in the westbound lane of Highway 101, the State Patrol said.

Roger Hopie, no age available, of Port Angeles was traveling westbound on Highway 101 in a 1991 Kenworth tractor-trailer and veered to the left to avoid the pickup.

The Kenworth crossed the eastbound lane and went into the roadside ditch while the attached trailer blocked the eastbound lane, the State Patrol said.

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