ROXBURY — A portable heater in the back of a Carthage man’s pickup truck struck him in the head when the truck crashed off Route 120 Tuesday morning off Route 120, state police said.
Jeffrey Jamison, 47, suffered a head injury and was taken to Rumford Hospital, where he was treated and released, Trooper Ron Turnick said from the hospital.
“I just told him he was lucky,” Turnick said. “People get killed like that. It’s like a missile coming at you.
“It appeared that the heater whacked him in the back of the head and cut him open pretty good,” he said. “He got a handful of stitches, I’d say.”
Jamison was driving west toward Roxbury Pond and heading uphill toward a sharp curve at about 11:20 a.m. when the accident happened.
Turnick said Jamison had a dog in his front seat and a load of ice-fishing equipment, a heater and an air compressor in the bed of his 2003 Dodge Ram 1500.
“He said he was coming up to the curve and reached over to secure the dog to keep the dog from, I guess, flopping to the floor or something, and he said he doesn’t remember much after getting whacked in the head, but he remembers trying to secure the dog and going off the road,” Turnick said.
Evidence at the scene indicated that the truck veered off the outside edge of the curve onto snow and ice, entered a rock-strewn drainage ditch, and then rammed into a rocky embankment.
“He smacked the embankment pretty good and kind of slid along it,” Turnick said. “Along with the dog, I’m sure that speed was an issue coming into the curve, and it was a little wet, too, with a little bit of debris on the roadway, and he slid off it.”
The impact mangled the passenger-side front end all the way back to the passenger door and ripped the tire and wheel off the axle. It also launched the heater and other equipment in the truck bed through the rear window, shattering it.
The truck continued up the ditch before coming to rest back on the road shoulder, with equipment strewn in and along the road.
A passer-by who knows Jamison took the apparently uninjured dog to Jamison at the hospital.
Turnick didn’t estimate damage to the truck, but did say that the Jamison family is without a vehicle now.
“When I went to the hospital, I guess his wife was there and she had wrecked her vehicle on that road a month ago, so I guess they’re carless right now,” he said.
Roxbury firefighters directed traffic around the scene for about an hour, before the truck was removed.
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- The driver of this 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 was taken to Rumford Hospital with a head injury after he lost control of the truck late Tuesday morning on Route 120, veered off a curve and struck an embankment in Roxbury Notch, state police said.
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- A gash through snow and ice in a drainage ditch along a rocky embankment shows the path of the 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 in the background after state police say its driver veered off Route 120 in Roxbury on Tuesday morning.
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