BETHEL – A Grafton Notch State Park ranger escaped injury Tuesday after nodding off at the wheel on Route 2 and whacking a utility pole with his vehicle.
Henry Hilton, 59, of East Winthrop credited his safety belt with keeping him snug in the driver’s seat when his 2000 Honda sport utility vehicle flew over a driveway and slid several hundred feet through a brush-lined, muddy drainage ditch.
He said he remembered little about the wreck that destroyed his car.
“I can remember the pole. That’s burned right into my mind,” Hilton said about hitting the pole almost head-on.
Instead, the pole smashed in the passenger side, blowing out windows as the SUV passed between the pole and its guy wire.
The wreck happened about 12:40 p.m. in front of SAD 44 Superintendent David Murphy’s home on Mayville Road, also known as Routes 2 and 26.
Hilton said he was driving east toward the park, returning to work in Grafton Township after vacationing with family in Minnesota. He remembered a late-night flight from Minneapolis and driving to Bethel from Portland on Tuesday.
“He’s very lucky,” said Bethel Police Chief Alan Carr. “A witness said he missed a couple of trucks, went off the road and into a drainage ditch.”
Carr said the SUV traveled about 500 to 600 feet off the road before stopping beyond the pole. He estimated damage at $3,700.
Hilton believed the SUV was totaled but, he said, the groceries he bought in Oxford were unharmed.
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