BETHEL – At about 4 p.m. Saturday, David Luxton was outside tending dogs that he and his wife breed, when he thought he heard a crashing metal sound on the other side of their home.

He secured the dogs and ran toward Route 2, expecting to see a wreck in front of his house of 29 years.

But in the darkness, he saw only oncoming traffic, he said, concluding that the noise must have been made by a passing pulp truck.

The next morning, about 7:30, Luxton said he saw “a bunch of debris” along the edge of the road and investigated.

He then saw that bark on a tree on the bank of the Pleasant River had been scraped away. But when he reached the bridge over the river, Luxton said his heart sank.

“There was a car upside down, nose down” in the river, he said Monday.

“You could see no glass visible, no windows, and the ice was around the car so that nobody could even open a door. You just know that anybody in that car had to be expired,” Luxton said.

He ran back to his home and called 911.

Responders included state troopers, Bethel Police Chief Alan Carr, Oxford County deputies, Bethel firefighters and Bethel rescue, the Maine Warden Service, and Cumberland and Oxford counties’ dive team.

Divers later found the body of Emily Fletcher, 21, of Auburn, in the small river, near the 1991 Volvo sedan that she was driving home from college in Vermont.

Victim drowned

Carr said Monday night, after meeting with Fletcher’s parents, that the medical examiner’s office had ruled that drowning was a contributing factor in Fletcher’s death.

“That was tough,” Carr said, on learning how the former Edward Little High School running star had died.

Carr said that he wasn’t sure if something in the road had caused Fletcher to swerve, or if there was ice on the curve, or if she may have fallen asleep.

“She came into a shaded area where we have some runoff, and sometimes it gets a little slick there,” he said.

“We’re still investigating why she went off the road, but we know that she went off the right side of the road, overcorrected, and struck the guardrail.”

At that point, the Volvo went airborne, hitting a tree, rolling over and dropping out of sight over the bank, into the icy river.

Through the ice

“The ice was a good three-and-a-half inches thick, and there was no breakaway ice beside the car,” said Luxton’s wife, Debby, who ran out with her husband after he called 911. “There was no water around it, but the car was upside down, really submerged. All we could see of it was the license plate and tail end of it,” she said.

The incident was an eerie reminder of a previous accident in which a woman, who was traveling east like Fletcher, crashed into the river, Debby Luxton said.

But unlike Saturday’s crash, David Luxton witnessed that one.

“That time, there was no noise. She went sailing by the house and ended up in the river. She was knocked unconscious. If David hadn’t of been standing up in the living room, he wouldn’t have seen it,” she said.

That woman survived.

Scene of several wrecks

The Luxtons said that the porch of their house, which fronts Route 2, has been struck several times, and that several drivers have ended up in the river.

David Luxton said that Route 2, or the West Bethel Road as it is known locally, banks around a curve heading downhill to the Pleasant River bridge.

“It’s like a race track. You spin out and you go to the inside of the curve” toward their home and the bridge just behind it, he said.

“There are signs indicating a corner, and it’s 50 mph all the way through, but people don’t go that slow. If people overcorrect, they crash. We’ve had some pretty bad ones, but never a death until now,” Debby Luxton said.

She and her husband said that in the past, a Molson Golden beer truck rolled over coming out of the curve, as did a double-trailer pulp truck loaded with logs, and even a tractor-trailer car carrier.

“It’s been an interesting place. The first year we lived here, a loaded car carrier went over the bridge. Last year, our neighbor came around the corner on wet slush, and ended up hung up and dangling over the bridge,” Debby Luxton said.

Road to be redone

That section of the road is scheduled to be reconstructed by the Maine Department of Transportation when money is available.

This year, the department rebuilt both ends of Route 2 in Gilead and Bethel, leaving the mile-long middle section, where the wreck occurred, as it was.

David Luxton said Transportation Department officials told him that the wasn’t enough money in the budget to do that section, in which a mountain of ledge must be removed.

“It’s better to get four miles done than one mile, and save the hardest part for last,” said MDOT regional engineer Mark Hume in June.

When officials announced that decision, Gilead and Bethel firefighters and area residents objected, saying that due to the many wrecks in that one-mile stretch, it should be done first.