By WILLIAM SNOWDEN Editor
Troopers with the Florida Highway Patrol reported three crashes at one time recently on U.S. Highway 319.
The crashes occurred on Wednesday, April 19, around 6:30 a.m. on the highway south of Bloxham Cutoff.
According to the report from FHP, troopers were responding to a crash call and stopped at a crash and roadblock at Woodrich Road. The troopers soon realized it was not the crash that had been reported.
Another trooper responded to the original reported traffic crash.
Meanwhile, while working that crash another wreck happened when a vehicle tried to swerve around an ambulance and struck a car in the oncoming lane, and spun a stretcher into some pedestrians on the scene.
The first wreck happened as northbound traffic was stopped and an SUV driven by a 47-year-old Crawfordville man failed to stop and hit a pickup truck and a sedan. The driver was arrested for DUI. The driver had no injuries. The drivers of the pickup – a 55 year-old Crawfordville man – and the driver of the sedan – a 28-year-old woman – suffered minor injuries. A baby in the woman’s car was not injured.
The second crash was also a driver colliding with stopped traffic. In that accident, a 36-year-old Crawfordville woman in an SUV collided with a pickup truck driven by a 23-year-old Crawfordville man and a sedan drive by a 43-year-old Crawfordville man. No injuries were reported to any of the drivers.
In the third crash, a 39-year-old Crawfordville man in a pickup truck was approaching the scene of the first crash – with emergency vehicles stopped in the roadway with lights activated, blocking the northbound lane.
The man reportedly traveled into the southbound lane to bypass the emergency vehicles when he colided with a southbound sedan, driven by a 16-year-old Crawfordville boy. The rear of the truck struck an empty EMS stretcher, which was pushed in the direction of multiple firefighters attending to the driver in the first crash. A pedestrian, reported as a 41-year-old man from Crawfordville, was struck by some debris in the crash. Two other pedestrians – a 26-year-old man and a 34-year-old man, both from Tallahassee – were struck in the legs by the stretcher, sustaining minor injuries.