TRENTON, Maine — Police say they are looking for a man whose truck went out of control and contributed to an accident and resulting traffic jam Friday afternoon on Route 3.
The highway was shut down for more than two hours, with traffic between Ellsworth and Mount Desert Island rerouted along Bayside, Goose Cove and Oak Point roads, while emergency responders checked on other motorists involved in the collision and then removed three damaged trucks from the road.
The man, whom the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department declined to publicly identify, ran from the scene and stole a Jeep at a nearby golf course to make a getaway, according to Lt. Chris Thornton. He said the suspect had four sets of bail conditions and a warrant for his arrest before the crash.
The collision occurred just before 3 p.m. when the driver of a GMC Sierra pickup truck aggressively pulled out of a dirt road while turning right onto Route 3 toward Ellsworth, causing the vehicle to fishtail in the roadway, according to Thornton. A North Carolina man driving a Ford pickup truck heading south on Route 3 toward MDI stopped out of caution when he saw the GMC come close to careening out of control, he said.
A flatbed truck operated by NewLand Nursery of Ellsworth and towing a backhoe on a trailer was following the Ford pickup too closely, according to Deputy Jacob Day, who is the lead investigator in the incident. The flatbed truck rear-ended the Ford, swerved into the opposite lane and struck the GMC truck head-on, he said.
The front end of the flatbed truck came to rest against the guardrail on the southbound side of the road, with the body sticking out across the southbound lane, while the demolished GMC truck was blocking the northbound lane of traffic, making the road completely impassable.
Police at the scene declined to release the names of any of the drivers or passengers involved but said they would identify them later Friday evening.
Thornton said a witness initially told police that the driver of the GMC had hopped into another vehicle that had stopped in the resulting gridlock. The information turned out not to be true and hindered efforts by police to quickly find and apprehend the man, he said.
About 45 minutes after the crash, police received a report of a white Jeep being stolen from Bar Harbor Golf Club on Route 204, and officers established that the driver of the GMC was the suspect in the vehicle theft, Thornton said.
A passenger in the Chevrolet truck was injured in the crash and was taken to Maine Coast Memorial Hospital for treatment. Deputy Day headed to the hospital around 5 p.m. to question the person about where the driver might be.
The rear end of the Ford pickup truck and the front end of the NewLand truck were significantly damaged in the collision.
Watch bangordailynews.com for updates.
