SKOWHEGAN — Frederick Winchester, the local man who died in a single-vehicle car crash in Norridgewock Sunday, left behind four children, including a 13-year-old son and a daughter who is engaged to be married in August.
Winchester, a handyman who loved working on cars, also loved driving fast — a passion that earned him the nickname “Fast Freddy” — and his children believe he may have been driving at a high rate of speed at the time of the fatal crash at the intersection of Madison Road and Ward Hill Road.
Winchester, 50, died instantly when the Chrysler Sebring he was driving failed to stop at the intersection, struck an embankment and turned end over end twice, according to the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office.
“We’re doing okay,” Winchester’s 19-year-old daughter, Chenyrene Winchester, said on Monday. “We’re having trouble realizing that it’s actually true.”
A little more than an hour before the accident, Winchester had dropped his son Daxton Frederick Winchester off in Madison after they spent the weekend together. Daxton Winchester, who lives with his mother in Anson, said spending the weekend with his dad was something they would do every couple of months.
“I kind of think I know what happened,” Winchester, 13, said of the accident. “Right before he dropped me off, he told me he was going to switch his front tires to the back and the back tires to the front. He was going to test them out, and when he tests things out, he goes at a high speed.”
Before he dropped his son off, he said the brakes weren’t working right. “I think it might have been the brakes that messed up, because he said he couldn’t stop. Maybe he tried, but the brakes couldn’t do anything,” Daxton Winchester said.
“I know he was very excited about trying his new tires out that he had,” Chenyrene Winchester said. “I know my dad pretty well, and he loved to try them out by just speeding as fast as he could and then stopping. He loved just driving around and trying to go as fast as he could on back roads.”
Chief Deputy James Ross of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office said it is unlikely police will be able to come up with the exact cause of the accident, although they believe that speed, and possibly alcohol, were factors. “He went through the intersection fast, didn’t stop and hit that bank,” he said. “We’re waiting for blood work to come in, but that’s a long ways down the road until we’ll get results from that.”
Although he had previously faced a charge of operating under the influence, Winchester’s family does not think he was drinking in the hours leading up to the accident, said Cassey Goodridge, Chenyrene and Daxton’s mother. She said it’s possible he suffered a medical event that caused him to lose control.
“I saw him about an hour before, and he hadn’t been drinking,” Goodridge said. “He was just very happy to see his son and be driving that car.”
Ross said there were no skid marks on the road, so police were not able to reconstruct the accident and were unsure how fast Winchester may have been going. The new tires should not have had an impact on the crash, he said.
“We don’t really know anything right now,” Goodridge said. “I just have to get the kids through this.”
On Friday Daxton Winchester and his dad started the weekend together with dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken and watched the movie “Life of Pi.” They spent Saturday and Sunday talking about cars, watching television, listening to music and visiting Daxton Winchester’s cousins.
“It was good because at least I got to see him,” Daxton Winchester said. “We talked about a lot this weekend, but I wish he was still here.”
Chenyrene Winchester, who lives in Bangor, said the last time she saw her dad she was home from college and stopped by his house to visit him. She wanted to give him an invitation to her wedding in August.
“He was excited,” she said. “He just said he couldn’t wait to be there.”
Both siblings remember their dad as a man who loved music and would sing along to the radio when he was driving. His favorite song was “Life is a Highway” by Rascal Flatts, Daxton said.
“Every time he hears that song he screams it,” he said. “He loved that song.”
Rachel Ohm — 612-2368
Twitter: @rachel_ohm
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