A routine afternoon on a rural Iowa highway turned into a three-vehicle pileup after a pickup truck driver failed to stop at a marked intersection, according to the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office. The crash happened on July 27, 2026, at the intersection of Highway 3 and W Avenue, and it left every vehicle involved totaled.
Deputies responded to the scene around 1:13 p.m. and found a semi-truck with trailer, a Dodge Ram 5500 with trailer, and a sedan sitting in the ditch. It’s the kind of scene that makes you slow down even more than usual the next time you approach a rural stop sign, because it’s a reminder of how quickly things can go sideways when one driver misses a cue that everyone else on the road is counting on.
According to the investigation, 20-year-old Diego Ernesto Guardado Tejada of Grandview, Missouri, was driving the Dodge Ram northbound on W Avenue with a passenger, 21-year-old Evanny Garcia, also of Grandview. Tejada failed to stop at the intersection’s stop sign and pulled into the path of a westbound semi-truck driven by 29-year-old Singh Lakhwinder of Iselin, New Jersey. The two vehicles collided, and the impact sent them careening into a Chevy Impala driven by 28-year-old Seth Reinking of Westgate, Iowa, who was stopped at the same intersection in the southbound lane…