Northern Indiana police say five deer that wandered onto a highway overpass jumped to their deaths onto Interstate 69, one of them crashing through a tractor-trailer's windshield.

After the animals' fatal plunge, their mangled carcasses littered the expressway to the horror of motorists who approached Friday's scene in the northbound lanes of I-69 about 20 miles southwest of Fort Wayne.

State Department of Natural Resources spokesman John Salb says the deer may have been spooked by cars as they were crossing the overpass and jumped from that overpass, not knowing that a busy highway was far below them.

The 20- to 30-foot fall killed all five deer. The last of the five deer went through the windshield of a tractor-trailer rig, but police say the driver was not injured.