Remember When: Car plunging from Tarentum Bridge frightened drivers for years

Stories of a car crash that occurred 55 years ago still haunt many drivers who use the Tarentum Bridge.

For those who were not alive at the time, the story has become somewhat of an urban legend.

The crash occurred on the morning of Nov. 20, 1968. The story dominated the front page of the Valley Daily News.

Antoinette Sluka, a 27-year-old mother of two, was crossing the Tarentum Bridge at 7 a.m. on her way from her home in Lower Burrell to Eat’n Park in Natrona Heights, where she worked as a waitress.

During a period of light snow and gusty winds, it is believed that she lost control on an icy spot on the New Kensington end of the bridge.

It was speculated that the car rolled several times before it jumped the curb, sidewalk and the 3-foot-high railing before falling 137 feet to the river below.

The New Kensington police received a call about 7:15 a.m. from a woman who reported, “I just saw taillights going over the bridge,” according to a report in the Daily News.

When Lt. Nick Perriello and Patrolman Ned Hanna arrived at the scene, they found skid marks but no damage to the sidewalk or the bridge railing. Because of the lack of evidence at the scene, had the “taillights going over the bridge” call not been placed, the crash might never have been discovered.

Looking over the railing near the skid marks, Perriello did spot the car in the water and called for additional help and the assistance of the fire department.

Within minutes, units from New Kensington fire companies 3, 4 and 5 were dispatched and making their way along an access road parallel to the railroad tracks on the New Kensington side of the bridge. They were accompanied by a tow truck operated by James Elias of New Kensington.

Members of the Eureka Hose Company of Tarentum also had been notified and quickly arrived in a motorboat at the location where the car entered the river. They reported that the vehicle had become submerged with only one rear wheel visible above the water’s surface.

It was immediately obvious to first responders that the tow truck sent to the scene did not have cables long enough or the power to free the automobile from the river’s grasp.

A West Penn Power Co. derrick truck was called in. Positioned on the bridge deck, it lowered its cables to the river below so the Eureka Hose firemen waiting in their boat could attach them to the car’s rear axle.

When the car was pulled from the river, it was badly crushed.

One fireman remarked, “My God, it looks like a tin can someone stepped on,” the Daily News reported.

The car was loaded onto a barge and taken to the Tarentum shore. When firemen searched the car for bodies, they found only a woman’s shoe.

Since Sluka was not found in the car, which was a convertible, it was believed she had been ejected during the accident.

Dragging operations began the same day and continued for the next five days. The search for her body included firemen and rescue workers from Tarentum, East Deer, Arnold, Brackenridge, Freeport, Harmar, Natrona, New Kensington and Springdale.

Sluka’s body was not found until the spring of the following year.

She was a native of West Natrona and a 1959 graduate of Har-Brack High School. She and her husband, Anthony, lived in Lower Burrell with their two young children.

The fact that the car could jump the sidewalk and the 3-foot bridge railing without leaving marks unnerved many Alle-Kiski Valley residents. They could not understand how it happened, and many were leery of using the Tarentum Bridge afterward.

Some older residents say they still think about the incident and feel uneasy when crossing the bridge.

In the years that followed, the bridge deck was redesigned. Between the traffic lanes and sidewalk, a Jersey-style barrier has been erected. This massive concrete barrier is designed to cause the tire of the car impacting it to turn inward, diverting the car back into the traffic lanes.

The old bridge railing was replaced with a tall, heavy-duty chain-link fence.