Truck takes a plunge in lake behind local eatery
Published 4:36 pm Thursday, May 30, 2013
As a Clanton couple went to Kountry Kitchen for their weekly Thursday morning breakfast, their new Dodge pickup truck parked outside decided to take a swim in the lake behind the restaurant.
Shortly after 10:30 a.m., the Chilton County Sheriff’s Department received a call that a 2012 silver Dodge Ram pickup truck rolled 200 yards down an incline behind the restaurant into a small lake directly behind Kountry Kitchen.
“The truck definitely picked up momentum rolling down the hill,” Chilton County Sheriff’s Department investigator Erric Price said.
Although an exact reason for how the truck plunged into the lake is unknown, speculation circulated that the manual transmission simply shifted out of gear.
The wife of the truck’s owner said her husband remembers placing the car in park as he got out of the car to go inside to the restaurant. Another couple reportedly saw the car parked at the top of the hill and when the truck’s owner finished his breakfast more than an hour later, he noticed his missing truck and skid marks in the grass behind the restaurant leading to the lake.
Price used his diving gear to dive more than 6 feet into the lake and hook cables to the car as a local wrecker pulled the truck from the lake.
“Unfortunately, the car is covered in a lot of mud,” Price said. “It made it difficult for me to hook the cables onto the car because it was covered in mud.”
Sheriff Kevin Davis said the situation could have been a lot worse and is thankful no one was injured as the truck rolled down the hill.
“This is just one of those things that happens sometimes,” Davis said. “Fortunately for everyone involved, it wasn’t worse.”