The cab of a pickup truck which flipped on to a tree in the front yard of a Russell Road house appears to have been flattened by the crash. The operator was not seriously injured. (Photo Courtesy the Westfield Police Department)
WESTFIELD – A Russell Road resident’s vehicle suffered damage in her driveway early Thursday morning when a motorist failed to negotiate the curve which marks the transition from Franklin Street to Russell Road and his vehicle knocked down a tree in her front yard which landed on her car.
City police and firefighters responded to reports of a rollover accident which started at 12:44 a.m. and found a pickup truck upside down atop a tree with the operator trapped inside.
The truck, registered to Jamie Kyle Patrick, 22, of 273 Prospect Street Extension, had been operating westbound and, according to the male resident of the property, had been “smoking” when the operator lost control and stuck a curb on the north side of Route 20.
The resident said that the vehicle then veered across to the south side of the roadway where a plow blade attached to the truck struck a row of bushes.
Although some of the limbs have been lopped off, the bulk of a tree which fell on a resident’s car during a vehicular crash early Thursday morning remains atop the vehicle Thursday afternoon in the owner’s Russell Road driveway. (Photo by Carl E. Hartdegen)
The blade sheared off, the resident said, and the truck flipped, end-over-end, to land on the small tree which then fell on his wife’s car.
Later in the day, the front yard of the residence was still littered with debris which had apparently been in the truck at the time of the crash and included a card indicating that Patrick had completed a Vermont State Police snowmobile safety program, suggesting that Patrick had been the operator when the truck crashed. Beer cans were also found at the crash site.
Firefighters report that the operator was trapped inside the vehicle when they arrived and extraordinary efforts were required to extricate him from the vehicle.
The operator was reportedly uncooperative with the responding emergency personnel and the resident said that the man appeared to be highly intoxicated.
He was transported to Baystate Medical Center where a spokesperson later reported that he had been treated and released.
