PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania — Pittsburgh police are searching for the driver of a tractor-trailer that knocked over the Troy Hill World War I memorial in the early hours of Sunday, November 8, and drove away, toppling a 106-year-old granite monument just three days before Veterans Day.

The truck was caught on security camera footage just before 4 a.m., trying to navigate out of a parking lot on Lowrie Street in Troy Hill, on Pittsburgh's North Side in Allegheny County. Neighbours told KDKA-TV they were woken by loud screeching as the driver struggled to get the big rig onto one of the neighbourhood's narrow streets.

“It was bleeding into my dream,” Josh Brower told KDKA-TV. “Sounded like somebody was stuck, and they were just revving their engine, trying to get unstuck.” Brower and Maura Bittle watched from their window as the driver spent at least five minutes trying to get free. “They finally get unstuck, go through the grass over there, and hit the monument, and then fully topple it and just drive off down the street,” Brower said. The video shows the trailer knocking the monument over as the truck turned onto the street.

Source: KDKA-TV via Europe Says

Pittsburgh Public Safety said the first call that brought officers out was for a semi-truck either illegally parked or stuck in the roadway. While officers were on their way, a second call reported that the driver had struck a utility pole and the nearby war memorial. The driver did not remain at the scene, the department said, and police are reviewing the security footage to determine the driver's identity.

A memorial that has stood since 1920

The fallen monument is the Troy Hill World War Memorial: a triangular granite honor roll with bronze tablets listing the residents of Troy Hill who served in the First World War. The American Legion's memorials register records its installation date as November 11, 1920, by the Troy Hill Draftee's Association, at Lowrie Square, in the 1700 block of Lowrie Street at Ley Street. The Historical Marker Database places it at the intersection of Lowrie and Froman streets and notes that the broad traffic island it stands on was itself created after several motor vehicle incidents at the spot.

By Sunday the monument was lying on its side on the island, with traffic cones around it and police tape still up nearby, in photographs taken by KDKA-TV photojournalist Bryce Lutz. WPXI, Pittsburgh's other major television station, carried the same scene in its Sunday-night coverage, with a photo gallery showing flags scattered around the fallen memorial. Neighbours told KDKA that drivers used to hit the memorial regularly, which is why the intersection was reconfigured to protect it — and that the changes seemed to have worked, until Sunday.

A second stuck truck, a few minutes away

Where the truck went next is part of the investigation. Reserve Township police posted on Facebook on Sunday morning that a tractor-trailer had gotten stuck a few minutes away from Troy Hill, leaving minor property damage there. A photograph that department shared showed a semi-truck carrying the same logo as the one in the Troy Hill security footage. A Pittsburgh Public Safety spokesperson told KDKA-TV that Pittsburgh police are reaching out to Reserve Township police to confirm whether the two incidents are connected.

KDKA-TV reported that it reached out to Reserve Township police and received no response, and that it also contacted Fastmovers Express Inc. — the company name listed on the side of the truck's cab in a picture provided to the station — and likewise received no response. Police have not publicly named the driver, and no charges had been announced as of the latest reports.

Why this lands with truck drivers

Troy Hill's streets climb a steep hill above the Allegheny River and were laid out long before 53-foot trailers existed; neighbours described the streets the driver was trying to reach as narrow. For the many Punjabi and South Asian truck drivers who run freight through western Pennsylvania, the case is a pointed example of how a wrong turn into a tight residential neighbourhood can end: a damaged vehicle can be an insurance claim, but leaving the scene turns it into a police search. The memorial was not a generic marker — it carries the names of one neighbourhood's own soldiers, which is why residents reacted the way they did. “I was pretty beside myself,” Bittle told KDKA. “To watch him just rip through a stone monument, like it was foam.”

What happens next: investigators will work from the security footage and the Reserve Township lead to identify the truck and its driver; any charges would follow that identification, and none had been announced by Sunday night. The city also faces the question of repairing and re-erecting a memorial installed exactly 106 years ago this Veterans Day, November 11 — a date Troy Hill residents are unlikely to let pass quietly with their honor roll lying on its side.