Story by Chris Lawrence
WESTON, W.Va. — An accident reconstruction team from the West Virginia State Police continues to work on finding all of the details of the fatal crash which claimed the life of Doug Skaff in Lewis County.
Skaff, 48, was killed when his SUV rear-ended a semi on I-79 in the southbound lanes between Jane Lew and Weston around 4 p.m. Tuesday.
“They’re still working the investigation to determine what took place, but there was some indication he had braked hard prior to the actual collision. We’re not sure if speed was involved. That’s a very busy and congested part of the Interstate, so we have to look at a lot of factors before we can make a determination,” said State Police Sgt. Kyle Totten.
Skaff, the Charleston area businessman and former House of Delegates member, was travelling in a Nissan Armada SUV. Totten said the first trooper on the scene was able to actually communicate with Skaff.
“The first trooper on scene did speak with Mr. Skaff briefly, but what the gist of that conversation was I can’t say at this time,” said Totten.
The crash caused heavy damage to the driver’s side of the vehicle, another indication that Skaff may have anticipated the collision too late and tried to avoid the truck.
“There’s definitely some indicators there he did make a last ditch effort to avoid the collision, but was ultimately unsuccessful,” he added.
Totten was unable to say if the crash happened in the right or left lane or what speed Skaff was travelling. The West Virginia Public Service Commission is doing a full inspection on the tractor-trailer to determine that it was operating within the legal limits.
The crash caused a shutdown of the highway for several hours southbound Tuesday afternoon.