DIXFIELD – Four University of Maine at Farmington students were injured early Saturday morning after the car they were in struck a Route 2 guardrail and ricocheted across the opposite lane and off the road, crashing into an embankment, Dixfield Patrolman Mark Dow said Saturday afternoon.
The injured, who were taken to Franklin Memorial Hospital and later released, were driver Nathaniel J. Edwards, 18, of Harrison, and passengers Felicia M. Sullivan, 18, of York, Gordon Thompson, 20, of Kittery, and Steven Thompson, 19, of Winthrop, Dow said.
He said he believed their injuries were minor, but two of them were strapped to backboards as a precaution before being placed in ambulances.
Dow said the four, who had been out for the evening, were returning to Farmington and headed east in Sullivan’s 1997 Volkswagen Jetta when Edwards dozed off. Alcohol wasn’t a factor, he added.
“He fell asleep at the wheel as the car was entering a left-hand curve. The car drove straight ahead, bounced off a guardrail, veered across the road, went off the shoulder and down an embankment, then crashed head-on into an embankment that goes up to tree line,” Dow said.
“I don’t think the guardrail slowed them down any,” Dow said.
The car spun 90 degrees off the guardrail and another 90 degrees after hitting the embankment, coming to rest in a drainage ditch facing west.
Dow estimated damage to the totaled Volkswagen at $4,500.
Assisting were Dixfield Officer Rusty Daley and Dixfield firefighters, who also directed traffic.
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