MEXICO – A Dixfield man, reportedly found unconscious by a passer-by early Thursday evening on Backkingdom Road, had apparently been flipped off his all-terrain vehicle, police said.
Thomas Dunlay, 60, of Coburn Avenue, was taken by Med-Care Ambulance to Rumford Hospital with a head injury, said Mexico Patrolman Mike Richard at the backwoods scene.
Nursing supervisor Carol Gould said late Thursday night that Dunlay was in stable condition in the hospital’s emergency room. She said she wasn’t sure if he would be kept overnight.
The accident is believed to have happened shortly before 6:30 p.m. about a quarter-mile from the Coburn Avenue bridge over Swift River in Dixfield. The river marks the boundary between Dixfield and Mexico.
Richard and Dixfield Patrolman Jeff Howe said evidence at the scene indicated that Dunlay, who was riding west on a 2005 Arctic Cat 650 four-wheeler, inexplicably veered off the dirt road.
“He hit the banking and rolled the vehicle, which flipped him right off,” Richard said.
It was not clear if Dunlay was wearing a helmet.
Howe, the first officer to arrive, said Dunlay told him he didn’t know what happened.
“He said that when he came to, he was lying on the ground with someone looking at him,” Howe said.
Dennis Hanson, also of Coburn Avenue in Dixfield, said that Dunlay had left Hanson’s house to pick blackberries on Poplar Hill.
There was an empty, white plastic blackberry bucket hanging from the ATV’s handlebar.
Richard turned over the investigation to the Maine Warden Service, which handles ATV accidents.
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