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Tractor-trailer carrying pigs overturns on I-95 near Fayetteville

A tractor-trailer carrying pigs overturned Wednesday morning while trying to merge onto Interstate 95 south northeast of Fayetteville, authorities said. The driver of the truck said many of the hogs did not survive.

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WADE, N.C. — Traffic on part of Interstate 95 near Fayetteville was halted for more than four hours Wednesday morning after a tractor-trailer carrying more than 180 pigs overturned near the Interstate 295 interchange.

Ronnie Copeland, who was driving the truck around 8:30 a.m., said he swerved to avoid a car traveling in the wrong direction on the ramp, lost control of his rig, causing it to flip onto its side.

The other vehicle, Copeland said, kept going, and investigators with the North Carolina State Highway Patrol said they don’t have evidence of any other vehicle involved. They could not confirm Copeland's account, saying only that the truck's load shifted.

Copeland, 49, of Clinton, said he was transporting the livestock from a Prestage Farms hog house in Newton Grove to a packing plant in Bladen County.

Animal control officers and workers from Prestage Farms loaded the surviving pigs onto another tractor-trailer following the wreck.

Copeland, who works for Davis Trucking Company, of Wallace, said many of the hogs did not survive.

There were no injuries in the wreck, and authorities have not said whether they plan to charge Copeland.

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