1 Man Dead, 2 Injured After 5 Car Crash On Highway 51 Near Coweta And Broken Arrow

A five-car crash on Highway 51 Thursday afternoon killed one man and sent two others to the hospital.

The highway has since been reopened but the investigation into what happened will take much longer. Coweta Police say five drivers were involved in the crash that shut down the highway for several hours. The crashed vehicles created quite a mess on a busy stretch of Highway 51 on the line between Coweta and Broken Arrow.

Mike Bell, the Coweta Chief of Police, says they were first called just after 1 p.m.

"Calls started coming in both to Broken Arrow 911 Center and to our 911 Center about an accident that had occurred on 51 and 101,” said Bell.

First responders from Broken Arrow, Coweta, Wagoner County, and GRDA went to help take care of the victims and start the investigation.

"We know that there was 5 vehicles involved,” said Bell. “We also know at this time that there was one fatality, that there was two transported by EMS to local hospitals."

Officers say investigating a fatal crash takes time and there’s a lot of measurements to take and evidence to collect, and they ask for people to be patient and stay back and let the officers do their jobs. Chief Bell says it’s frustrating to see people drive around barricades and says he understands everyone is in a hurry, but they need to respect the barricades or additional people could get hurt.

"Please understand that we're blocking the road for a reason, there was a fatality, we're going to have to go out there and do a complete investigation as to find out what actually took place out there,” said Bell. “We owe that to the victim that's in the vehicle that's there," said Bell.

The names of the victims have not been released.

Authorities are still investigating what caused the crash.

It will take several days to figure out what happened, and investigators will be interviewing all the people involved.