TOWNSHIP 3 RANGE 4, Maine — A 5-year-old boy and his mother who both were flown by helicopter to a Bangor hospital on Sunday after the ATV they were on rolled over, are already home, the father of the boy said Monday.
“They’re both fine,” Barry Grant of Island Falls said of his injured wife, Janelle, 27, who broke her right arm and his young son, who suffered cuts to his head that required stitches. “They’re home now.”
Grant declined to give the name of his son, but did say the two injured were part of a larger group of people riding four ATVs to Bible Point when the rollover occurred just before 7 p.m. Sunday. The group included Grant, his wife and child, a male friend visiting from New York, another woman and two other children.
“The road had washed out in the middle and we didn’t know,” he said. “We came right up over a hill and it was right in the middle of the road” and hard to avoid.
Grant, who was riding ahead of his wife and son, said he stopped to avoid the washout and hoped that his wife would see him pulled over and avoid it too.
But his wife’s ATV hit the washout and rolled over, injuring both Janelle Grant and their son.
His wife and son were on the last ATV in the group. Neither was wearing a helmet, Grant said. Under state law, anyone under 18 is required to wear a helmet when riding an ATV.
His son has a helmet, but the Grants “just ended up leaving without it this one time,” Barry Grant said. “They say it only takes once.”
The boy will never go ATV riding without a helmet again, his dad said.
“He had some cuts, but they got stitched up and they sent them home both last night,” Grant said.
The group was travelling on an old logging trail that was familiar to Grant and his wife, he said.
The two injured riders were taken by LifeFlight helicopter to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Deborah Turcotte, Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife spokeswoman, said Monday.
“They asked me [if LifeFlight was needed] but I don’t have any [medical] training,” Grant said. “They did it as a precaution.”
Game Warden Scott Martin is investigating the incident, according to Maine Warden Service Sgt. Tom Ward. Patten and Island Falls ambulance services assisted at the scene.
The mostly unused logging road was washed out at the point where the rollover occurred because of recent heavy rains, Turcotte said.
“Because of all the rain statewide, there is a lot of water in the trails,” she said. “We’re asking people to use caution and to ride at a reasonable speed.”