By Mark LaFlamme,Staff Writer

GREENE – Police believe a medical condition may have led to a Thursday afternoon crash that claimed the life of an 86-year-old Greene man on South River Road.

Police said Edward Beauchemin died about 4:30 p.m. after crashing his car into a tree a short distance from his home.

Beauchemin was driving up a short hill covered with slush when his car struck a tree and bounced to the other side of the road, police said.

Heavy, wet snow had begun falling, coating the roads and leaving them slick, at about the time the crash occurred. But because Beauchemin was near his home on a dead-end road, speed was ruled out as a factor in the crash.

“A witness saw him coming up the hill slipping and sliding a bit,” said Maine State Police Trooper Keith Frank. “There does not seem to be the amount of damage to the car you normally see in a fatal accident. And he lives right there. He definitely knew the road.”

Police believe Beauchemin may have been in some form of medical crisis in the moments before he crashed. Frank said the medical examiner will determine the cause of death as the investigation continues.

A neighbor said Beauchemin lived in a trailer set back from the dead-end section of South River Road, but that he drove in and out of the neighborhood often.

Groceries inside the vehicle indicated he was returning home from the IGA roughly 2 miles away, Frank said.

Androscoggin County Sheriff’s detectives Rielly Bryant and William Gagne assisted state police in a reconstruction of the crash scene. Greene firefighters closed off South River Road at Daggett Hill Road while the reconstruction was under way.

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