Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 19, 1994 TAG: 9405190134
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-9 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The collisions sent a 50-year-old Roanoke woman to a hospital and backed up eastbound traffic, which was already limited to one lane by highway construction, for several miles.
Motorists stood outside their cars watching as Blacksburg police and emergency workers - including Trump - worked to remove Martha J. LanPhear from her car and sort out the bizarre 10 a.m. crash.
The LifeGuard-10 rescue helicopter flew LanPhear to Roanoke Memorial Hospital where she was in satisfactory condition and being treated for a cut on the back of her head, a nursing supervisor said.
LanPhear was lucky, police Lt. Walter Mosby said. He did not know if she had been wearing a seat belt.
Trump, who is a member of the Blacksburg Rescue Squad, said he was a few hundred yards up the highway when he heard the first wreck begin.
"I just looked up and saw her shoot across the median strip," he said.
Blacksburg police said the chain-reaction wreck began when LanPhear's car went off the right side of the road, striking a guardrail and highway construction sign. The car skittered across both westbound lanes, into the median and then into the eastbound lanes.
After striking the car, the first truck - driven by Willard Ronald Davidson, 55, of Christiansburg - ran off the right side of the road, struck a guardrail on the eastbound side, then continued until it was on the westbound side of U.S. 460 atop a guardrail.
The second dump truck, driven by Anthony Wayne Owens, 31, of Radford, also struck LanPhear's car. Police had no information on whether the drivers were injured.
Police rerouted traffic onto Southgate Drive and around the campus and the Tech Airport.
The collision was indirectly responsible for another wreck on nearby Southgate Drive leading out of Virginia Tech. An ambulance on its way to the U.S. 460 crash struck a car in the rear, sending the car into the other lane.
Officer J.A. Ramsey of the Virginia Tech police said the ambulance wreck occurred when a car in front of it started to make a U-turn.
Allison Smith was leaving campus to go home to Falls Church when she saw police cars with their emergency lights flashing at U.S. 460 and Southgate, Ramsey said. Figuring there was an accident there, Smith decided to turn around to leave campus by another route. Smith told police she didn't hear the ambulance's siren as it approached.
Jennifer Heath was driving the ambulance and had a passenger, Ramsey said.
Smith and Heath were treated and released from Montgomery Regional Hospital. There was no information available on the unnamed ambulance passenger.
by CNB