GOLD HILL — A woman was critically injured and her young son also hurt when their car swerved in front of a van this morning on Liberty Road.
The woman was pinned unconscious in the black Dodge Stratus, and passersby had to lift her toddler son, still in his child safety seat, from the back seat of the Stratus.
Though she sustained a cut to her head, the driver of the van, Sally Drew, got herself and her son, T.J., who was riding in the back seat, out by herself. Drew works in the Business and Human Resources Department at the Salisbury Post.
Trooper K.G. Brown said both children were strapped in properly in the rear seats of their vehicles.
All four people were taken to Rowan Regional Medical Center. The boy in the Stratus was later taken to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center with fractures to his leg, according to Wayne Ashworth, head of the county EMS. The woman, who apparently lives in Granite Quarry, was in critical condition. Drew and her son were still being treated late this morning.
Greg Ewing, a junior at East Rowan High School, was driving behind Drew’s blue van this morning about 7:25 a.m., headed north on Liberty Road to pick up another student before class.
Ewing saw the Dodge Stratus coming around a curve in the road as it came toward the van and Ewing’s white Mustang.
The Stratus dropped off the road’s black asphalt curb and, apparently losing control, swung across the double-yellow line, right into the path of the van.
Ewing said he and the van were driving about 50 miles per hour at the time, and the van really didn’t have time to stop.
The front of the van caved in the passenger side of the Stratus.
Ewing immediately stopped and ran to the cars. The woman driving the Stratus was unconscious, and her son was in the back seat screaming.
Drew, bleeding from a head cut, was getting her son out of the back seat. “She was wigging out,” Ewing said.
In a short time, several other motorists stopped, and Ewing said one woman, who said she was a certified nurse’s assistant, was trying to help the injured. She checked the pinned driver’s pulse and told Ewing it “was going in and out.”
Ewing and other passersby lifted the toddler in his seat out of the Stratus, and ambulances took the woman and the toddler to Rowan Regional.
Keisha Doby, 17, lives just a short distance away and awoke this morning to the high-pitched sound of squealing brakes and then the sickeningly loud thump of the vehicles colliding.
She quickly drove down the road to see if she could help. She said the toddler in the Stratus eventually stopped screaming but may have suffered a broken leg.
Doby talked a little with Drew and her son as they sat on the side of Liberty Road, awaiting emergency medical workers.
Trooper Brown said she did not know what might have caused the woman driving the Stratus to lose control, though she did appear to drop off the right shoulder of the road.
Contact Frank DeLoache at 704-797-4245 or fdeloache@salisburypost.com
.
Today's News
