By Ethan Forman
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DANVERS — A car hit two telephone poles more than a mile apart on busy Route 62 early Wednesday afternoon, before careening over a rock wall and landing on its roof in a horse paddock at Essex Aggie.
After emergency crews used Jaws of Life tools to pry the driver and sole occupant out of the car, Lyons Ambulance took her to Beverly Hospital with serious injuries, police Sgt. Robert Bettencourt said. Bettencourt could not give the driver's name or her condition, and he did not know the cause of the crash.
Culinary students at North Shore Community College who witnessed the accident said two or three horses were standing in the paddock right where the car landed, but they fled and escaped injury.
The Buick LeSabre first struck a utility pole in front of 313 Maple St. at 12:33 p.m., Bettencourt said. The collision snapped the pole, bringing Electric Division crews to the scene.
The car then continued 1.4 miles west on Maple Street, toward Middleton, and struck the guy wire of another pole and flipped over a rock wall at a sharp left bend in the road, about 200 feet east of John T. Berry Memorial Hall.
The mangled car landed on its roof on an incline by a shed, its driver's side front wheel missing and plastic bottles strewn about. A tire lay about 50 feet to the west of the wreckage at the base of an evergreen tree.
Culinary student Chris Manning, 23, of Swampscott was working with others in the bake shop in Berry Hall when he heard a noise and looked out the window.
He watched as the car flipped over the wall, broke a tree limb and spun 360 degrees on its roof while traveling more than 20 feet on top of the wall. The car then snapped a utility pole's guy wire, flipped again and landed in the paddock.
"Right as we were running out, the Danvers officer was there," Manning said. The officer had pulled up in the opposite direction the Buick had been traveling.
The officer who arrived first on the scene was Sgt. Kevin Janvrin, Bettencourt said. The students ran out to help, but the officer told them to stand back just in case the car exploded.
Culinary student Sally McDonald, 22, of Lynn had been sitting in her car on lunch break in the parking lot below the paddock when she saw the car land. She said it took about 10 minutes before crews could extricate the driver.
"As I looked up, I saw a car coming over the wall," said culinary student Matt Eline, 20, of Marblehead. The students screamed for someone to call 911. Workers from Essex Aggie showed up with crowbars and tools trying to free the driver.
"I was just worried she wasn't alive," said McDonald, who said the woman was not moving.
Staff writer Ethan Forman can be reached at 978-338-2673 or eforman@salemnews.com.
