A five-car crash Wednesday night injured five people, with two being flown out of town with serious injuries, police said.
At about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, the Juneau Police Department got a report of the crash, which happened in the 8100 block of Egan Drive near Fred Meyer, according to a JPD release. Witnesses saw a silver Ford Focus driving outbound on Egan when the car did a U-turn in the middle of the road and began driving the wrong way on the outbound side of the road, police said. The Focus hit a silver Toyota Sienna head-on, according to the release.
The drivers of three other cars tried to stop but couldn’t, and crashed into each other, the release states. These cars were a white Toyota Yaris (driven by a 31-year-old man), a red Mercury Mariner (driven by a 65-year-old man) and a white Ford pickup (driven by a 30-year-old man), according to the release. All of the drivers are Juneau residents, police said.
A 66-year-old man was driving the Focus, police said, and a 70-year-old woman was also in the car. Both of them were taken to Bartlett Regional Hospital, and the woman was eventually flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with serious injuries, according to the release.
The 31-year-old man who was driving the Toyota Yaris was also flown to Harborview for his injuries, the release states.
Four of the five vehicles were considered totaled, and traffic was stopped in the outbound lane for the next six hours as police investigated the crash.
JPD Lt. Krag Campbell said there’s a possibility that alcohol or another controlled substance might have been factors in the crash. JPD got a search warrant to get a blood sample for the 66-year-old man driving the Focus. Campbell said no charges have been filed yet, so police aren’t releasing any names. Campbell said that medical needs take precedence over filing charges, but the case remains under investigation.
• Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or amccarthy@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @akmccarthy.
