Recently in Crashes Category

I was talking to a Lowell Police officer on election night and we both mentioned on how hard it is for me to get information about incidents that happen on the overnight shift.

We were like prophets.

The incident that makes that discussion relevant happened on Nov. 8, when a guy was struck by a Jeep Laredo on Gorham Street in Lowell.

The crash was caught on video, but you'll have to find it on your own because the subject matter in the websites that have it isn't something we want to link to from a newspaper read by a lot of families and kids.

I've gotta admit, I got smoked on this one.

So here's where my information gathering abilities can hopefully add to the story even though I initially missed it, though.

Police got the call for this at 1:41 a.m., on the morning of Sunday, Nov. 8.

The guy who was struck in the video is Michael Howell, 31, of Lowell, who went out into the street with several other people when a fight occurred outside the bar, according to police. Police aren't sure if Howell was involved in the fight.

A 27-year-old Lowell man was driving the Jeep, but police declined to release his name since the accident is still under investigation.

According to registry information a friend of mine got by running the plate, the car is registered to a guy from Clinton Street in Lowell. It's not a name I recognize, though, so I don't think there's any good reason to be paranoid about the name not being released.

I'm not going to publish it since that's not exactly an official source. I'll make sure to get it from police once they're ready to release it.

The fairly incredible news here is that Howell was taken to Saints Medical Center and then transferred to Tufts where he is in good condition. Police say he is expected to get out of the hospital soon.

So far no charges have been filed against the driver. I'll be keeping tabs on whether that changes.

File this one as: All I know is that I don't know nothin.

It only took a few minutes after I got into the newsroom tonight for me to catch the call for a car reportedly in the water of the Concord River.

According to police radio broadcasts I caught en route, the car was in the water behind Muldoon Park, off Billerica Street, where it meets Lawrence Street, and police found a man and woman who had been in the car walking on Lawrence Street at the bridge over the Concord River.
(That's just a couple hundred yards from the scene of the crash).

I saw a younger-looking man and woman clutching each other as they sat on the curb along Lawrence Street waiting for a Trinity Ambulance, but they were in the ambulance by the time I got parked and tried to get a photo.
They walked to the ambulance on their own and appeared to be alright.

Here's a picture from the scene taken by one of our photographers, Julia Malakie.

The people on the bridge told police they had been alone in the car, so the activity at the scene was all about getting the car out of the river before too many fluids leaked.

Firefighters put down absorbent pads, and were planning to put a boom around the area once the car was out.

A big, BIG tow truck from Lowell Fleet Towing eventually lifted the car out of the river, as shown in this video.

Police have no word on who was driving, or any other details. It sounds like the officers who handled this were at the end of their shift, and so aren't going to finish their report on this until Sunday.

The SUV, which appeared to be a Mitsubishi Outlander, had New Hampshire plates.

It must have gone in the river from the parking lot at Muldoon Park, cause no one could figure where else it might have gone in, but there were no obvious tire tracks or skid marks despite the wet ground.

...and basketball hoop, and back stairs.

William Foley, 17, was in his house playing Call of Duty last night about 9 when he heard something a heck of a lot louder than the sound effects of the war game.

"I thought an 18-wheeler smashed into a house or something," he said.

Close.

As you can see above, it was actually a Jeep, and it had actually smashed into the basketball hoop in the driveway of Foley's house, and then the garage next to his house, and then the back stairs of his house.

Foley's mom had just left for work. Besides William, she has kids who are 20, 12, and 8, and a babysitter was at the house to keep an eye on the younger kids.

William and the babysitter ran outside just in time to see a whilte male dressed in black bolt down the street toward the swamp at the end of Melrose.

About 5 minutes later, Canine Officer Todd Donaldson found the guy pictured below in the swamp. He was arrested, but he hasn't been booked yet so I'll have to add his name to this entry later.

So far he is only charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Police say he matches the description of the person who fled the Jeep, but officers are still investigating to make sure that's the case.

The bad day on I-495 started about 2:45 p.m., in Littleton.

That's where state police say a 25-year-old Andover man pulled out of the breakdown lane, lost control of his 2009 Kia Rio, went back into the breakdown lane, struck a message board, and then got ejected from his vehicle.

He was taken to Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston by MedFlight, where he was pronounced dead.

The Rio was the only vehicle involved. Still waiting for a release from the state police to identify the guy.

Forty-five minutes later, on I-495 north in Foxboro, a 75-year-old Connecticut man lost control of his Toyota Avalon and rolled over in a crash that killed a 69-year-old Connecticut woman who was a passenger in the car.
The driver was also hospitalized with serious injuries.

UPDATE: The man killed in the Littleton crash was William Pfeil, of Andover, who was not wearing his seat belt according to state police.

I thought we had a local guy involved in a plane crash in upstate New York tonight, because the tail number on the plane came back to Kenneth Walter, of Hudson, NH, but it turns out there was only a slight local connection.

State Police in New York tell me that JD Morrissett, of Bumpass, Virginia, was the actual pilot of the Ercoupe 415-C single-engine plane that went down near Clermont, N.Y., yesterday afternoon about 3 p.m.

Apparently Morrissett had just bought the plane from Walter, and was flying from Hudson to Virginia when the plane had mechanical problems over upstate New York and Morrissett had to land in a field.

Police said the landing went alright until the plane hit a rut in the field and flipped onto its roof.

Here is a photo taken by the Fox affiliate in Albany, New York, WXXA Fox-23. It was forwarded to me by a friend aat Fox-25 in Boston.

State Police said Morrissett got out of the plane on his own and only had very minor injuries.

The FAA couldn't tell me much tonight, because a spokesman said the FAA investigator won't get to the scene until morning.

Mr. Walter appears to have an unlisted number in Hudson, so I was unable to reach him tonight.

So, after serving his country in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Afghanistan again, Army Reserve Master Sgt. John Rondeau has been living in West Sixth Street in Lowell for less than a year.

In that short time, his new pickup truck has twice been demolished by errant drivers while parked in front of his home near West Street, where he lives with his wife and daughter.

This is the damage done when it happened for the second time on Saturday, about 11:40 p.m.

This time was extra low, because police say the driver of the Chevy Tahoe, Renne Milinazzo, 38, of 132 Hampshire St., admitted to having a few beers, and was slurring her speech so badly she could barely finish sentences.

She had also tried to run from the scene, police said.

Rondeau told me his wife saw the driver take off, though, so he chased her down.

"This was the second time," he said. "I wasn't letting this one go."

Police found Rondeau and Milinazzo on West Street, nearby. Milinazzo complained of minor injuries so she was taken to Saints Medical Center instead of being booked.

She will be charged with operating under the influence of alcohol, leaving the scene of a property damage accident, and marked lanes violation.

Lets all slow down on West Sixth Street there for a while eh? I think Mr. Rondeau deserves better than a third wrecked truck for his service.

The state just got back to me and the mystery is solved, an error is corrected, and it turns out there wasn't an entire tire to blame.

A state police spokesman tells me Dorothy Lovenbury, 51, of Dunbarton, NH, was driving the white Kia pictured below on Interstate 495 near exit 33 in Chelmsford when the tread from a dump truck tire came off the tire and struck her car windshield.

As you can see, it did a fair amount of damage.

Lovenbury was taken to Lowell General Hospital with minor injuries to her hands.