DIXFIELD – A Plymouth couple and their dog were taken to area hospitals Friday after their car veered off Route 2, became airborne and landed in a gully.

Driver James E. Ivory Jr., 64, and his wife, Jeanne B. Ivory, 68, of 137 Etna Road, suffered head and body injuries. They were transported by Med-Care Ambulance to Rumford Hospital.

Police Chief Richard A. Pickett said James Ivory suffered a forehead laceration and a possible concussion. He also complained of abdomen pain on his left side. His wife suffered a fractured left wrist and complained of leg pain.

Pamela Pace, a Dixfield resident who witnessed the wreck, took the couple’s white dog, Gunther, to a veterinarian in Rumford to be checked over. The couple’s son was driving down from Newport to retrieve the dog, Pickett added.

A Rumford Hospital nursing supervisor declined to say whether the couple had been treated and released, or transferred to another hospital.

The wreck occurred at 11:25 a.m. on Lower Main Street at the junction of Route 2 and old Route 2, which is also known as Old Canton Road.

According to witness Joseph G. Lapointe Jr., who was traveling two cars behind the Ivorys’ westbound 1999 Plymouth Breeze sedan, the Ivory car veered into the opposite lane after rounding a curve and descending a slight grade.

Pickett said that Jeanne Ivory said her husband had fallen asleep at the wheel.

Pickett said the car slammed into a guardrail and flew several feet through the air. It sailed over a brook and, based on evidence at the scene, bounced off a boulder lining the brook and into a clump of four trees.

The wrecked car literally landed in a gully about 30 feet down from Route 2.

Dixfield and Rumford firefighters and Med-Care paramedics extricated the couple from the wedged-in car, carrying them out strapped to litters. Once out, with help from Pickett and a mountaineering rope, rescuers carried the couple up the steep, slippery embankment to waiting ambulances.

Dixfield Fire Chief Scott Blaisdell and another firefighter then helped get the dog out of the gully.

Firefighters were able to extricate the couple without using hydraulic tools.

While Blaisdell credited the solid construction of the car with protecting its occupants, Pickett said that safety belt use and dual airbags saved their lives.

“From looking at the scene, had they not been harnessed in seat belts and had not the airbags deployed, we would very easily be looking at a fatal accident,” he said.

“They were lucky they didn’t nose-dive into the brook. If they’d have gone head first or roof first onto those boulders, that would have been it.”

M/T Pockets of Dixfield retrieved and then towed the totaled Plymouth.

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