A firefighter and tow truck driver prepare to pull a car out of the ditch beside Route 4 in Turner on Friday evening. The driver was arrested but her identity was not immediately available.
A firefighter prepares to pull a car from a ditch beside Route 4 in Turner on Friday evening. The driver, standing next to a Maine State Police trooper, was later arrested.
TURNER — A woman was pulled from her mangled car early Friday night after it skidded off Route 4, struck an embankment and rolled several times.
The woman’s identity and the charges against her were not immediately available.
She was not injured in the 6:15 p.m. wreck near the intersection of Lower Street. She was arrested at the scene.
Witnesses said the woman, headed toward Livermore, had been driving fast and recklessly and at least once attempted to pass another car in the road shoulder.
Megan Hayes of Turner said she was driving north on Route 4, headed for home, when the speeding car came up behind her.
“She came right up on us and almost ran us off the road,” Hayes said. “Then she tried to pass us on the right. I’ve never seen anything like that. I thought I was going to die.”
Hayes said the woman in the speeding car lost control of the vehicle just after Lower Street.
“She jerked the wheel and she was gone,” Hayes said. “The car just launched.”
The four-door car slid off the road, narrowly missing a utility pole and struck a wet, grassy embankment. The car rolled several times, witnesses said, barely missing a second pole but taking out the guy wire as it flipped.
The car came to rest with its wheels in deep grass alongside Route 4.
Tyler Trask, a passenger in Hayes’ vehicle, ran down the road to help the driver of the crashed car.
“I was thinking that she had to be dead,” said Trask, of Auburn.
But inside her car, the woman was still stomping on the accelerator, apparently unaware that she had crashed, Trask said. Seconds later, an off-duty firefighter pulled the woman out of the car.
There appeared to be no injuries.
“She was talking, she was walking, she was fine,” Trask said.
A tow truck driver and two Maine State Police troopers arrived a short time later. As the tow truck operator began the process of pulling the wrecked car out of the ditch, the woman who had been driving it stood watching, her shirt and pants caked with mud.
Police questioned her at the scene before arresting her.
Hayes said when the speeding car first came up behind her, she was afraid the driver would pass and head into oncoming traffic.
“It was terrifying,” Hayes said. “I’d rather it be me she hit than a car full of kids.”
State police were continuing to investigate the wreck later Friday night.
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