Seven people have been killed in a horrific crash as a passenger van was 'sandwiched' between two trucks.
Bodies covered with plastic could be seen in a nearby field along Interstate 5, about 7 miles (11kms) north of Albany, Oregon, following the wreck.
The crash is one of the state's deadliest in recent memory.
Seven adults died, police said, but they did not specify how many more were injured.
Officers responded at about 2.05 pm to the crash involving the three vehicles in the northbound lanes, Oregon State Police said in a statement.
The passenger van appeared to have been crushed between the trucks.
“Judging by the damage, it looked like the van was sandwiched,” Adrian Gonzalez said. “It got hit very hard.”
”The passenger vehicle involved was a van."
Bodies covered in plastic could be seen in a nearby field and the Marion County medical examiner was at the scene, the Albany Democrat-Herald reported.
Two Life Flight helicopters landed and took people away while paramedics treated others on the ground, Gonzalez told the paper.
A Life Flight helicopter left the scene at about 2.45 pm.
A local witness watched from his van stopped on a freeway onramp as the emergency helicopter arrived. Roger Pike told the Albany Democrat-Herald: “Ambulances filled it up."
Emergency crews put a blue tarp over the wrecked van and put up a barrier to block sight to the other crashed vehicles.
The cause of the crash was under investigation.
The cause of the crash is under investigation, police said.
A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation said the last crash this deadly was in August 2018, when a collision in Eastern Oregon killed eight people.
The northbound lanes of I-5 were closed and traffic was being detoured, state transportation officials said.
Officers were telling drivers to expect a five hour delay due to the wreck.
Albany lies between Salem and Eugene and is about 70 miles (113 kms) south of Portland. I-5 is the main north-south interstate highway on the West Coast.
