Cows roam Kansas City highway after trailer plunges from Missouri Viaduct, killing dozens of cattle

Dozens of cattle spilled onto a Kansas City, Mo., street when a tractor-trailer plunged off a highway overpass in the city’s downtown and fell onto a car early Sunday, blocking some roads and sparking a search for the traumatized animals that survived.

The accident occurred shortly before 3 a.m. and the rounding up of surviving livestock continued into the early afternoon, authorities said.

The driver of the truck and the driver of the vehicle the truck landed on suffered minor injuries and were treated at local hospitals, they said.

Kansas City Police Sgt. Phil DiMartino said between 45 and 60 of the 120 to 130 cattle the truck was carrying were killed when the tractor-trailer overturned and fell off the westbound I-70 curve over SB I-35.

Dozens of other cows fled the scene of the accident, leading to other accidents and more calls to police from the public, he said.

“It is believed that all of the cows have now been accounted for,” DiMartino said in an updated news release Sunday afternoon.

The accident occurred on a day when the Kansas City Chiefs hosted the Los Angeles Chargers in a National Football League game. Authorities had not anticipated major disruptions to game traffic due to the widespread publicity the accident had received.

Some cattle had traveled several miles before being captured, said Kansas City Fire Battalion Chief Michael Hopkins.

“It was a pretty nasty accident,” Hopkins said.

Immediately after the accident, city officials launched drones to track the cattle before a private company working in conjunction with the trucking company arrived with workers on horseback to round up the cattle, he said.

“It was more difficult to recover the animals that did not survive,” he added.