A Maine state trooper was injured after his cruiser was rear-ended by a vehicle on the Piscataqua River Bridge in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, early Wednesday.
Shannon Moss, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety, identified the trooper as Thomas Welch, 43. He was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries following the collision.
Welch was in a fully marked police cruiser with its lights activated around 6:36 a.m. when a Ford pickup truck driven by Sean McInnis, 31, of Merrimack, New Hampshire, hit the cruiser. The crash happened in a construction zone on Interstate 95, just before the Maine border where a lane closure was going to be set up for the bridge project.
McInnis and two other occupants in the pickup truck were not injured. The cause of the crash remains under investigation by the New Hampshire State Police, Moss said.
Maine and New Hampshire have Move Over Laws that require drivers to move over and slow down when approaching stopped emergency vehicles whose flashing lights have been activated.
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