Turkey smashes through semi windshield, injures trucker on I-5 near Medford

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MEDFORD, Oregon (KPTV) — A woman is warning people to be on the lookout for wildlife on the road after her father was hit and nearly killed by a turkey in Medford.

Dave Duell was on his normal long-haul trucking route along Interstate 5 South when a 40-to-50-pound turkey flew into the roadway.

Emily-Jean Duell, the trucker’s daughter, said while the incident left her father with some pretty serious injuries the initial surprise left her feeling lighthearted.

“Laughing,” she said. “Lots of laughing. I had shown him the second I got it, the picture of the turkey looking down the barrel of the dashcam and at his windshield. Even with his broken rib, he was laughing at it. He thought it was hilarious.”

Emily said it wasn’t all a laughing matter when she got a phone call from a nurse, explaining to her that a bird had smashed through her father’s windshield and knocked him unconscious. The collision with the turkey sent his semi-hauling three trailers off the roadway in rural Oregon.

At first, all she knew was that a big bird had caused serious damage to the truck and her dad.

“I was thinking a hawk,” she said.

Emily nervously hit the road to look for her dad and found him at a Medford hospital.

She would eventually learn that it was a turkey that had flown into the roadway.

“They were cleaning his wounds and pulled out some turkey feathers,” she said.

She described her father as a goofy guy who doesn’t take anything too seriously.

He suffered a broken rib and tooth, a fractured jaw and a fractured vertebra in his neck. However, she said the worst of it is the bone around one of his eyes was shattered.

“They called it an orbital blowout,” which she said her father will need surgery for. “The entire bone behind his left eye is shattered.”

Despite the aftermath and what she describes as an emotional roller coaster, she said her father is lucky to have crossed paths with the bird and survive. She said one doctor shared with her that he could’ve easily been killed.

“It all could have been astronomically different,” she said. “The time to worry about him surviving is over and now we’re hoping that he can keep function in his eye where the orbital is shattered, because that is how he works. If he loses vision in that eye, he can’t work.”