Investigation of Bridge Incident Ongoing

The young woman who got stuck in her car on the Maple-Oregon Street bridge Aug. 13 has befuddled investigators from the Sturgeon Bay Police Department (SBPD) and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. Neither entity has determined just how she got onto the bridge, and managed to keep her car in place, while the bascules rose to almost 45 degrees during the scheduled hourly opening at 6 pm.

Photographs of the incident taken by Sturgeon Bay resident Dustin Fritsch were circulated on Facebook, the Internet social networking site, and eventually made national news last weekend.

By Monday, the SBPD was still working to track down the driver of a light colored sedan – a car the department was unable to identify from photographs taken by bystanders of the incident.

SBPD Chief Dan Trelka recounted the incident from what investigators had heard from other drivers on the bridge Thursday.

“She was driving across the bridge, near where the draw opens, when the red lights and bells started going off,” Trelka said. “She started to move on and the arms were down so she was trapped. She started to back up and the bridge started to rise. The bridge tender stopped the bridge, lowered it, the gates opened and she started driving off. The bridge tender asked her if she was OK, she was, and that was it.”

The new bridge is equipped with video surveillance. However, the equipment was not properly functioning Aug. 13 to record the vehicle stuck on the bridge. The DOT’s chief engineer and maintenance supervisor made a trip to Sturgeon Bay Aug. 17 to try to determine what caused the young woman to get past the warning arms and lights for the bridge. According to Kim Rudat, northeast region communications manager for the WDOT, the cameras had previously been operational, but needed a reboot.

“The system wasn’t rebooted until [Monday] morning,” Rudat said. “The machine was rebooting every week. It will now be rebooted every morning. Had we not had this event, we might not have realized the machine was malfunctioning.”

SBPD investigators are appealing to the unknown young woman and anyone who witnessed the incident to contact the department. The young woman is not in trouble, Trelka said.

To contact the Sturgeon Bay Police Department, call 920.746.2900 or email [email protected].