SUMNER – An elderly Sumner woman was flown to a Lewiston hospital Friday after the driver of the car she was in apparently fell asleep and went off Bonney Road into woods, state police said.
Grace Keelty, 83, was in stable condition Friday night at Central Maine Medical Center, according to a nursing supervisor.
The driver of the 1999 Saab, George Healy, 83, of Sumner, was not injured, state police Trooper Terry James said.
He credited slow speed, a safety belt and an air bag with preventing more serious injuries.
Healy was driving south about noon when he apparently fell asleep, James said.
The car traveled about 150 feet through brush and over boulders with a tire caught on the edge of an embankment, which, James said, prevented the car from rolling over or hitting a clump of trees. Instead, it only struck one tree.
He said a passer-by, Justin Elsman of Hartford, and passenger Eben Bretton, whose hometown was not given, spotted smoke rising from the Saab and stopped to help. Elsman, James said, “got Grace out and carried her up to the road.”
“Normally, you don’t move an injured person like that, but the car was smoking, so he did the right thing by getting her out of there,” he said.
Keelty, who previously had a broken shoulder, suffered a head wound.
Sumner firefighters assisted at the scene. Douglas Towing of Buckfield retrieved the demolished Saab.
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