Four-vehicle crash injures 2, shuts down U.S. 72

Published 2:00 am Friday, February 4, 2011

Paul Stumpe was heading home to Florence in his blue Ford pickup Thursday afternoon when he saw the unavoidable.

A white Nissan Infinity speeding east on U.S. 72 about 4:30 p.m. apparently tried to pass a car in the left turn lane at Hine Street. Instead, the driver rear-ended a black Volkswagen Jetta, then tried to dodge or veer left and collided head-on with a white GMC Sierra pickup heading west in the inside lane of 72, said Athens Police Officer Randy Vickers.

The impact pushed the Sierra into the path of Stumpe, who was westbound on the outside lane of 72.

“I knocked the hell out of him,” Stumpe said of driver Anthony Lopp, 34, of Killen. “There was nothing I could do.”

The collision crushed the front end of Stumpe’s pickup and dislodged the 25-foot trailer he was pulling, which was loaded with electronics parts. His truck and trailer were forced onto the curb near the BP station, where his trailer plowed about a 20-yard long furrow in the grass.

Stumpe, 54, told The News Courier he thought the driver of the white Infinity— later identified as Cory Hale, 24, of Russellville — was trying to lose a police car when the collision occurred.

Vickers said that was not the case. He said a motorist had telephone Athens Police Department earlier to say she had followed a reckless, speeding driver back from Florence who was headed east on 72. An officer in the area responded to the call and tried to locate the driver, Vickers said.

“By the time the officer gets to 72, he sees the car fly by and gets on 72 and tries to catch up but never gets very close to him before he wrecks,” Vickers said. “The car never even saw the officer.”

More than a dozen firefighters and police officers converged on the scene, which looked as if chunks of vehicles had rained down on it.

Traffic on 72 was backed for two miles in both directions before the wreckage was cleared, one witness said. Some motorists were being routed into parking lots to get them to an intersection and past the congestion.

As police officers investigated the scene and interviewed witnesses, emergency personnel from Athens Fire & Rescue were busy removing the roof of the Infinity to extract Hale. They cut the roof from the car’s body and flipped it forward onto the hood. Inside, a dazed Hale was bleeding from his jaw and mouth. Rescuers fitted him with a cervical collar, removed him from the car and rushed him to Athens-Limestone Hospital. He was transferred to Huntsville Hospital, but his condition was not available at press time. The officer did not believe his injuries were life threatening.

Lopp, who was driving the Sierra owned by Prince Telecom of Athens, also had to be extracted by rescuers, Vickers said. Although Lopp suffered a black eye and was initially put on a gurney and taken to an ambulance, he later declined to be taken to the hospital, Vickers said.

The driver of the Jetta, who was not injured, initially left the scene of the wreck but then returned, Vickers said.

Police and firefighters were on the scene until 5:50 p.m.