ELLSWORTH, Maine — It was a lucky day for Timothy Abbott, but not so much for Harry Jones.
The 21-year-old Abbott managed to steer a loaded wrecker in reverse through the heart of downtown for about a quarter-mile at as much as 40 miles per hour on Thursday without injuring anyone.
It was a feat skillful enough to draw praise even from police who cited him for driving with defective brakes, but the wrecker didn’t stop until it hit Jones’ apartment house at 24 Main St. — the second time in two months that a building owned by Jones was damaged by an out-of-control vehicle, he said.
“Our houses,” Jones said, “are getting in the way.”
An employee of Andy’s Auto Repair of Searsport, Abbott told police that he had driven down the large hill Jones’ house sits upon, crossed Union River and ventured east to the Oak Street area when he realized his brakes were gone, Ellsworth police officer Rick Roberts said.
Abbott threw the vehicle into reverse to stop, but couldn’t park it, Roberts said.
With the wrecker heading backward, Abbott hit two parked vehicles on Main Street and gained speed as he came back down through the intersection of Water and State streets. The careening wrecker recrossed the river, but couldn’t quite manage the left-curving turn that would have taken him back up the hill, Roberts said.
One of the drivers almost hit by the wrecker, Susan Dickson-Smith of Gouldsboro, said she found her near-miss surreal. She was on State Street about to turn onto Main when the wrecker barrelled by, she said.
“It takes a minute to even process the fact that there’s a loaded tow truck going backward at a good clip through town, let alone the part where I had almost been hit, with my driver’s side directly in his way,” Dickson-Smith said. “I’ve totalled a car on black ice before, and this was more frightening.”
The brake pads on the wrecker were worn down to less than an eighth of an inch, said Trooper Darren Vittum of the Maine State Police Commercial Vehicles Enforcement unit.
Abbott, a Jackson resident, declined to comment.
The wrecker punched a hole in the front wall of a ground-floor apartment, knocked out some porch supports and slightly damaged a staircase at the 100-year-old Main Street house. A Subaru hatchback atop the wrecker sustained heavy rear-end roof damage.
The damage to the house could have been worse. A heavy snowbank and a sharp hill in front of it likely slowed the wrecker just before impact, witnesses said. The wrecker left deep tread marks into the soil near the driveway.
The house appears to be structurally sound despite the damage, said Roberts, who couldn’t get over Abbott’s handling of the wrecker.
“We’re just really, really lucky that this wasn’t worse,” Roberts said. “For that driver to keep it on the road like he did was really fortunate.”
The call came in to police at about 1:15 p.m.
The first accident in which a Jones property was damaged is about seven-tenths of a mile from the Main Street address. A box truck sliding on black ice slammed a parked vehicle into Jones’ rental at 52 Surry Road in early February, Jones said.
Both accidents ended well, he said.
“The important thing is that nobody got hurt,” Jones said.
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