Police: E-cigarette malfunction causes personal injury crash

Tabnie Dozier, @WHAS11Tabnie10:41 p.m. EST January 5, 2016

JACKSON COUNTY, Ind. (WHAS11) – It took just under three hours’ worth of clean-up to remove a semi that crashed on I-65 North in Indiana near the Jackson-Scott County line.

Indiana State troopers say the cause is an e-cigarette the driver was using that exploded in his face. No one else was hurt.

“The truck went onto the shoulder then ultimately struck a guardrail before coming to a stop,” Sgt. Stephen Wheeles said.

Wheeles says the driver, Christian Starasinich was hurt which he calls the crash a rare one.

“His injuries are primarily from the device exploding in his hand and not from the crash itself. I personally have not heard of an instance like this where someone was injured by one and it possibly caused a crash,” he said.

Troy Leblanc, owns the 5 Kentuckiana Derb-e-cigs locations and also represents the Kentucky Smoke Free Association.

“When you hear something like that you hop that the driver is not severely hurt as well as other motorists, that’s a large truck,” Leblanc said. He says e-cig users and people in general should not be alarmed after this uncommon crash.

“It’s extremely, extremely rare. We don’t see it very often, don’t here it very often,” he said.

These devices Leblanc explains are highly popular with more than 9 million Americans using them regularly.

“I urge them to come in the advice is free and we’d be more than happy to help anyone out,” he said.

Here in Kentuckiana, sales are soaring, especially in the past two years.

“We’ve sold over five million dollars in product in our store alone of out of the 30 plus stores in the city,” Leblanc adds.

The circumstances from this crash are still unknown and Leblanc says that can make all the difference as he wonders what type of device was the driver using and how old it was, was he charging it correctly, maintenance there are so many unanswered questions.

But what can be said from both police and e-cig experts, is this crash could have had a much more devastating ending.

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