Published: May 12, 2008 11:07 pm            

Tree hits moving cars

3 escape serious injury in Westwood

Westwood — Three, including a mother and her baby, escaped serious injury when a tree fell on their moving cars this morning.

The tree, about 4 feet in diameter, toppled across Wheatley Road around 9 a.m. It hit two cars, crushing the driver’s side of one.

“I heard the thud and then blood-curdling screams,” said Vicki Clark, in front of whose house the tree stood.

Clark, who had been asleep in her house, ran outside and saw the mother and child with blood on their faces. “I don’t know how they got out. There was nothing left of the car,” she said. The driver’s side of the vehicle was crushed and the air bag had deployed.

The child safety seat was on the opposite side of the car; Clark believes the positioning may have saved the child. “There was nothing but the hand of God on them,” she said.

Heather Newsome and her daughter, Emily, were treated at King’s Daughters Medical Center and released, hospital spokesman Tom Dearing said.

The other driver, a woman, was not hospitalized and her identity was not immediately available.

The tree had fallen diagonally and blocked the entire road plus part of Bellefonte Road, which forks from Wheatley at that point.

Clark speculated recent rains may have soaked into the trunk and also weighed down the dense covering of ivy on the tree. The remaining trunk section, cut off at ground level, is rotten and hollow to within inches of the perimeter.

The tree is on the state right of way and Clark said she had asked the state to remove it.

The road was closed for more than an hour, said Deputy Brian Knipp. Besides the cars, the tree also knocked down power lines, he said.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2652.

        

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