Fort Walton Beach Car Wreck Seriously Injures Three People

On behalf of Terence Gross of Gross & Schuster, P.A. posted in Car Accidents on Monday, January 3, 2011.

A moment of careless driving on Sunday evening appears to be the cause of a car wreckthat seriously injured three people in Fort Walton Beach. The two-vehicle collision took place at about 7 p.m. in front of the Sun Plaza Theater on the Mary Esther cut-off.

According to witnesses interviewed by the Northwest Florida Daily News, two men in a Cadillac pulled out of the Sun Plaza Theater’s parking lot in front of a man driving a Hummer H3, who was heading south on Mary Esther.

The driver of the Hummer said that he tried to swerve into the adjoining lane in order to avoid hitting the Cadillac, but he was unable to avert the accident entirely and struck the left side of the car. The Hummer apparently rolled over twice, and the Cadillac spun out.

“I tried very hard to miss him,” the Hummer driver said.

“The truck hit it and flipped twice and this one (pointing to the Cadillac) just spun,” said one witness.

Witnesses said that both the driver of the Cadillac and the passenger appeared to be conscious but seriously injured after the car wreck.

“One was delusional and the other was in a lot of pain and vomiting,” one eye-witness told reporters. Both were conscious, but the driver’s lack of coherent speech and the passenger’s vomiting could be symptoms of serious head injuries.

The Hummer driver initially thought he had not been injured in the rollover accident and refused medical treatment, but reconsidered when he started having trouble breathing. The three injured people were taken to Fort Walton Beach Medical Center.

A dog riding in the Cadillac jumped out of the vehicle after the crash, scared but apparently uninjured. He was taken away by a representative of PAWS, an animal shelter and advocacy organization.

“He fared the best,” one witness said of the dog.

Source: Northwest Florida Daily News, “3 injured in Mary Esther Cut-Off rollover wreck,” Mona Moore, January 2, 2011