MEXICO – Gouged earth and mangled guardrails beside Route 2 and Provencher Lane on Monday showed the path of a box truck driven by a Lewiston man.
Lawrence W. Cole Jr., 45, had to be removed through the windshield of the 2005 Isuzu box truck after it rolled onto the passenger side into a small ravine, Mexico Patrolman Jeff Stoddard said Monday morning.
Cole, who suffered a possible broken leg, was taken by Med-Care Ambulance to Rumford Hospital, Stoddard said.
Nursing supervisor Peg Blouin said he was treated and released.
The wreck, which tied up police and Mexico firefighters for nearly two hours, happened just after 8 a.m.
Stoddard said Cole was hauling a load of cardboard for Mid Maine Holdings LLC of Lewiston, driving west on Route 2 when “he inexplicably went too far to the right” opposite the Big Apple convenience store.
“He went on one property and continued across the lawn. He tried to correct and said the truck rocked back and forth, then he panicked and never hit the brakes,” Stoddard said.
The truck sheared off a row of mailboxes at Provencher Lane and “plowed through a guardrail, then went nose first into property on the other side of the ravine” before rolling over, he said.
Rumford firefighters cut out the smashed windshield while Mexico firefighters directed traffic.
Stoddard credited the use of a safety belt with preventing more serious injury.
“He could have been thrown right through the windshield because of the way he hit the guardrail,” Stoddard said.
By 9:45 a.m., Warren Strout and Dave Hodgson, owner of M/T Pockets Towing of Dixfield, used two big-rig wreckers to right the truck, then hauled it away.
Stoddard estimated damage to the truck at $10,000.
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