Patient Killed In Virginia Ambulance Accident

A 64-year-old McKenney woman is dead and a county ambulance driver is in critical condition following a horrific crash yesterday morning on Interstate 85 just north of the Dinwiddie-Petersburg line.

At about 9:20 a.m., a Dinwiddie County Rescue Squad ambulance apparently veered off the right side of the southbound lanes of I-85, striking a concrete abutment that surrounds a drainage pipe which runs under the interstate. According to David Jolly, director of fire and emergency services for the county, the impact of the crash pinned the driver of the ambulance in the cab of the vehicle and threw a second emergency worker and the patient being transported to the floor. The ambulance continued down a grassy embankment running parallel to the lanes of traffic on the opposite side of the guardrail for some 430 feet before coming to a stop in an area covered in heavy bushes and small trees.

The crash occurred about a mile and a half from Boydton Plank Road and could be seen from the overpass at Squirrel Level Road. Authorities are still working today to determine what caused the accident, though some witnesses have told State Police that the ambulance was driving at a high rate of speed and weaving in and out of traffic without its lights or siren on.

The woman who died, Hattie Crittendon, was being transported to Southside Regional Medical Center in Petersburg for back and neck pain when the incident occurred. County officials have said she died of cardiac arrest but have not released whether her death was related to the crash or the conditions that led to her initial call for ambulance service.

State Police are also not releasing that information at this time.

William C. Connor Jr., 39, the emergency medical technician who was caring for Crittendon in the back of the ambulance when the crash took place, suffered non-life threatening injuries in the accident.

Connor, who has worked for the county as an EMT for about two years, was transported by ambulance to SRMC where he was treated and later released.

The driver of the ambulance, James Johnson of Southern Pines, N.C., was seriously injured in the wreck and was trapped inside the cab of the ambulance.

Members of the Petersburg Bureau of Fire and Emergency Services, Dinwiddie, Namozine and Ford Volunteer Fire Departments, and an ambulance from Colonial Heights assisted in the rescue efforts.

"I was really impressed with the way everyone pulled together and worked to help one another in a difficult time and such a bad situation," Jolly said. "This was a difficult extrication, but everyone worked hard in a time of need."

Firefighters wielding chain saws and other heavy machinery cut away bushes and trees as well as portions of the ambulance to gain access to Johnson.

It took firefighters and rescue workers more than an hour to extricate the driver from the mangled ambulance before he was transported by Medflight to the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals in Richmond with serious injuries. Last night, officials said Johnson had pulled through surgery and was listed in critical but stable condition.

No update on his condition was available this morning by press time.

Both Johnson and Conner are members of the county's limited paid emergency personnel. Most emergency workers and firefighters in the county are volunteer.

Alvin Langley, chief of the Ford Volunteer Fire Department in Dinwiddie, was the first to arrive at the scene of the crash and said that while working accidents is difficult, working a scene that involves a co-worker is even harder.

"This is something you never want to have to deal with because we know we have a job to do but it is difficult when you have to work on one of your own," Langley said. "It makes you realize it could have been any one of us. That's the reality we face."

Authorities are still piecing together the sequence of events concerning the crash.