A Mississippi highway closed on early Saturday for over six hours due to an overturned pickup truck trailer hit by an 18-wheel truck. The accident caused the death of four people - a father and daughter and two young men.

The smash-up, which happened just after midnight, also involved almost a dozen vehicles traveling on Interstate 10 in Hancock County near the Louisiana border.

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The pickup truck's trailer, filled with used computer, overturned and spilled its content across the highway 10 miles from the Louisiana boundary. Vehicles stopped, but the 18-wheeler drove on eastbound and collided with six passenger cars and four big rigs, said Lt. Johnny Poulos of the Mississippi Highway Patrol, reports the New York Daily News.

The fatalities are 49-year-old Mark Wager and 18-year-old Ariana May Wager from Lucedale, Mississippi, and 23-year-old Brandon Alexander Ester of Slidell and 21-year-old Ryan Deforest of Lacombe, Louisiana, according to Hancock County coroner Jim Faulk.

Poulos said that the damage on some of the vehicles is so bad that became difficult to identify their make and model right away. Four more people were injured in the smash-up, but their wounds are not life-threatening.

The police had to detour the eastbound traffic to an exit located 2 miles from the state boundary line that the gridlock extended into Louisiana.

Poulos described the accident scene as "pretty overwhelming."

Tagsvehicular accident, Mississippi