The call no one wants to get. That’s how the daughter of a Kansas state trooper recalls the moment she found out her dad was hurt in the line of duty.
On Tuesday, April 26, around 9 a.m., Trooper Shawn Summers was inspecting a semitruck on Interstate 70 near mile-marker 144 in Ellis County.
“I had stopped a vehicle for a truck inspection on Interstate 70 and went up to the driver, opened the driver’s door and stepped up on the first step. Blessed that I did that. I wasn’t there just a few seconds talking with the driver, and it sounded like a bomb went off,” Shawn told KSNW/WDAF. “I wasn’t sure if her truck blew up or what. I looked to her and looked in the front and seen the semi that had hit my patrol car go into the ditch and through the barbed wire fence.”
Another semi-truck had crossed onto the shoulder and hit him and his patrol car after not moving over to allow space for the stopped emergency vehicle, as required by Kansas state statute 8-1530.
Shawn’s oldest child, Stanna, was in school when she received a call from her mom, informing her to call her back on her cellphone. Stanna said that she knew something had happened as soon as she got a call.
“If that semi would have moved over, my dad — I would have never gotten that call, my dad would have never been in the hospital. There are so many people that have died, lost their lives, because they just haven’t moved over,” said Stanna.
