INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - One person was seriously injured when a semi truck crashed into the Rockville Road bridge on I-465 Tuesday.
Christine Haraburda, 28, of Indianapolis, was driving to her job at IPS when her car was struck by debris falling off the bridge. Large pieces of concrete struck her car, smashing through the windshield. She had no warning and never saw it coming.
Haraburda underwent surgery at Eskenazi Hospital to fix a compound fracture and other damage to her right arm caused by the falling debris.
"She was just driving and all of the sudden she realized she could not even use her arm. And she realized she was being hit in the face with stuff. It was shattered glass. And directly in front of her the glass was intact. It was all around. It all went in around the car all around her. She was all worried about her work stuff on her passenger seat. And she was like, as soon as I get there will you text my boss and tell her I think the Wi-Fi hotspot is broken because it's sitting in the passenger seat where all the rocks and concrete fell? She's worried a library book that's due today," said Beverly Murray, the victim's sister.
Murray says her sister was worried about everyone else. But no one else was injured - and bystanders quickly came to Haraburda's aid.
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"A nurse actually came up out of nowhere. And said I'm a nurse, I'm a nurse, let me help. And so she was like checking her pulse, making sure she had blood flow in her lower arm because she got hit in the upper arm. She put the car in park for her - crawled through a window or something. And was helping her making sure she doesn't move or anything," said Murray.
Murray says a last-minute lane change may have saved her sister's life.
Murray says it took first responders a while to get her sister out of her heavily damaged vehicle - which Haraburda only bought a month ago.
Inside that damaged car, Haraburda had a very tight window of safety.
"So basically she has an open fracture. It means the bone is out of the arm. It shattered. It's broken in multiple places. There is nerve damage where she can't move her hands very well. So they're going to surgery right now and they're going to try to repair the bone with metal plates or whatever - they're not sure till they get in there. And hopefully that nerve damage kind of fixes itself but they're not sure. If it will be a long recovery or a short recovery for the nerve damage," said Murray.
Haraburda works in educational services for IPS and had just started a master's program in art. She's right-handed, so her recovery is really critical.
