WATERVILLE — One person was injured and five vehicles sustained damage in two traffic accidents Wednesday evening on Kennedy Memorial Drive in Waterville, according to police.
The crashes occurred within roughly half an hour of each other, the first around 4:45 p.m. near the intersection at Airport Road and the second about 5:15 p.m. by the Waterville Burger King.
Jess Trial, 31, of Augusta, was driving toward the city in her white Ford EcoSport SUV when she hit a Toyota Camry that was stopped at a red light in front of her. The Camry then struck a dark gray Toyota Tundra just before 5 p.m.
“I was on my way to see my grandpa in the hospital. I looked down for a moment and (hit the car in front of me),” she said at the scene. “It was my fault.”
Shards of broken taillight reflectors lay on the pavement of Kennedy Memorial Drive’s left lane as Waterville firefighters removed the scraped and dented fender of the Camry. The Tundra appeared to have minor cosmetic damage.
The Camry’s driver, a 29-year-old man who said he did not want to provide his name, said he was “sitting at the stoplight and got rear-ended.” He had been driving with his fiancée, who was loaded into a Delta ambulance after suffering minor injuries as a result of the incident, according to Lt. Scott Holst, of Waterville Fire and Rescue. Holst was not able to comment on the specifics of the woman’s injury.
“Delta (Ambulance) got the person out and in the rig before I got here,” he said.
Trial said she never had been involved in a traffic accident before Wednesday.
“Before today, I’ve done very well,” she said.
Traffic was reduced to one lane as officers worked to clear the street and vehicles were towed away.
One Waterville patrol officer, Timothy Hinton, who had responded to a report of the three-vehicle crash, was back on Kennedy Memorial Drive dealing with a second crash minutes later, this time on the opposite side of the double yellow line.
A Brewer man, Craig Glass, said he was traveling toward Oakland to get onto Interstate 95 North when his black GMC Sierra was hit by the entrance to Burger King by a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction.
“Someone was letting someone in (the driveway) and he must not have seen me. He came and turned right into the side of my driver door area,” he said. “I should have just stayed on the highway.”
The truck’s front fender and driver-side door and part of the backseat door were dented and scuffed. The back tire on the right side was torn and deflated.
The driver of a silver Subaru, who Hinton said had turned into the path of the GMC in an attempt to enter the Burger King parking lot, declined to comment on the incident. The front fender of the Subaru had been removed and the driver-side headlight was broken. No one was injured in that crash, and the cars were pulled off the road into the Burger King parking lot to avoid blocking traffic.
Meg Robbins — 861-9239
Twitter: @megrobbins
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