Post office employee steals mail truck, leads officers on wrong-way chase along I-79, police say

MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa. — When you first see it, it’s hard to find words. A mail truck heading down the interstate going in the wrong direction.

“It’s surreal. All those cliches hit you, your life flashes in front of your eyes and I was scared. I was having a calm trip then all of a sudden, I’m like whoop,” Daniel Freeman said.

Freeman was living it. Driving home from a weekend away, he’s approaching Waynesburg going northbound on I-79 when he sees state troopers and flashing lights on both sides of the interstate.

“People started pulling over on the shoulder and I was going to go around the truck in front of me and as I’m going around, I see a mail truck coming up the center of the highway at me.”

That’s when his dash cam captured the whole thing. We now know from Moon Township Police that a USPS employee refused to return the truck Sunday afternoon. That employee is 35-year-old Tyler Floro and troopers found him in Waynesburg where they tried pulling him over in the southbound lanes of I-79.

But he went through the median and started going south in the northbound lanes for over two miles when he was captured on this video.

“Guy came by he was all dressed in his uniform; he had a smile on his face like he was just going out for a Sunday ride the wrong way up the interstate,” Freeman said.

Troopers tried multiple maneuvers before finally getting Floro off the road and into custody. He’s now in the Greene County Prison facing charges out of Greene and Allegheny Counties.

“It was determined that he was under the influence of drugs and was in possession of drug paraphernalia. While in police custody he did assault an officer and was charged with aggravated assault for that, fleeing and eluding and multiple other charges related to his offenses,” said Trooper Kalee Barnhart with PSP.

The US Postal Service did confirm to us that it’s aware of the incident, but did not confirm Floro’s current status following his arrest.

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