LINCOLN, Maine — When police were charging Justin Osgood on Thursday with allegedly driving more than 100 mph while speeding a chain saw accident victim to the hospital, his father was too busy to defend him.
Penobscot Valley Hospital doctors were just beginning to treat Dwight Osgood, who was discharged from the hospital on Saturday after having three layers of substantially more than 100 stitches sewn into his neck and the top of his chest.
The 68-year-old Macwahoc man said Friday that police were wrong to cite his 33-year-old son, and he hopes the charge of “driving to endanger,” which could result in a six-months jail sentence, will be dismissed when the case is heard in Lincoln District Court on Nov. 8.
“I told him, ‘Go faster! Go faster! Go, go, go!’ He went where I told him to go,” Dwight Osgood said of Justin. “I don’t think we endangered anyone. We did not take any chances.”
Justin Osgood could not be reached for comment.
Dwight Osgood holds no grudge against police. The retired bus driver for School Administrative District 30 and tractor operator expressed gratitude that Officer John Walsh and Detective Mark Fucile provided a lights-and-siren escort for Osgood’s Subaru. Alerted by a 911 call from Dwight Osgood’s wife, Pamela Osgood, the officers spotted the SUV on Route 2 between Danny Drive and Town Farm Road, Dwight Osgood said, and once they caught up to it, escorted it through downtown and to the hospital on Enfield Road.
Walsh said he could have pressed several other charges against Justin Osgood, including criminal speeding, illegal passing and refusing to stop for a law enforcement officer. Walsh opted to go with a lesser charge in light of the son’s belief his father urgently needed medical treatment.
“The point that we are trying to drive home is that driving over 100 mph through a school zone is unreasonable. It’s dangerous with the foot traffic and the other traffic that was there at the time,” Walsh said Thursday.
Sitting in the Subaru’s back seat and still talking to 911 dispatchers over her cellphone, Pamela Osgood’s relayed police commands to stop for a waiting ambulance, but her son ignored them. Dwight Osgood believes his son would have slowed considerably through downtown but admitted that Main Street was “pretty hairy,” congested with cars and pedestrians.
“I thought it would be quicker to just keep going,” Pamela Osgood said.
They were only about 3 miles from the hospital at that point, she said, and she thought her husband was slipping into shock. Dwight Osgood takes blood thinners for a heart condition, she said.
Dwight Osgood was cutting firewood on the back of his pickup truck when his chain saw suddenly kicked back, cutting from his jawbone down to the middle of his chest. He said he staggered into his kitchen and stuffed a rag into the softball-sized hole in his chest, using it and his hands to help staunch the bleeding. Then he, his wife and son raced the 40 miles from their home to the hospital.
“I was feeling terrible. I was in shock,” Dwight Osgood said. “I could see my windpipe.”
Doctors told them that, had the chain saw sliced into him a millimeter left or right it would have cut his windpipe or severed an artery, likely killing him, Dwight Osgood said. But, he added, the doctors expect him to recover fully and be able to go home in three days.
“He is a really lucky man. I went and bought him a Powerball ticket. His doctors couldn’t believe it,” another son, Dwight Osgood Jr., said.
And Dwight Osgood sounds like he still can’t believe the accident happened. “I’ve run a chain saw for 55 years. And I’ve only had one other accident, and that just cut my shoe,” he said. “I’ve had friends who have had this kind of accident. I always used to say, ‘How the hell did that happen?’
“Now I know.”