SUV’s red-light dash causes crash

See the result of what witnesses say was a large vehicle running a ‘very, very yellow light’ on SE 82nd Avenue in the Lents neighborhood …

SE 82^nd Avenue at SE Woodstock Boulevard is shut down during rush hour, while emergency first-responders extract an injured driver from her smashed car.

Story and photos by David F. Ashton
Southbound traffic on SE 82^nd Avenue of Roses at Woodstock Boulevard came to a standstill about 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 6, when a Toyota SUV collided with a Nissan Sentra GXE.

Looking at the crushed in driver’s side of the Nissan four-door, it was obvious that the compact car had been involved in a severe side-impact accident, or T-Bone crash.

Firefighters removed the injured driver of this T-Boned car from the passenger’s side doors.

Before a Portland Fire & Rescue ladder truck – the vehicles that carry power extraction tools – arrived, firefighters and paramedics riding Lents Station Engine 11 were able to stabilize the victim, and safely remove her from the passenger side of the vehicle.

“I am concerned about my wife,” confided the victim’s husband, who rushed to the scene, and was standing at the AMR Ambulance as paramedics closed the door.

The concerned husband of the victim comforts his wife, strapped to a gurney in an ambulance, before being transported for medical care.

Portland Police Bureau officers at the scene corroborated what a witness told East Portland News about how the accident occurred.

“The Sentra was going east on Woodstock,” said Manny Gonzalez, “Just after her light turned green. But this big, black truck was really ‘haulin’ [indicating traveling southbound] on 82^nd and – smash! It hit so hard, it spun the car around.”

–The Toyota SUV witnesses say that ran a red light and smashed into the small car shows few signs of damage.

The truck of which Gonzalez spoke was a large modified Toyota SUV with a “brush bumper” on the front, parked around the corner from the wreck scene. Other than minor scrapes and paint transfer, it appeared undamaged.

At deadline it remained unclear if the driver of the SUV, who stayed at the scene and cooperated with police, was impaired, or was cited for failure to obey a traffic control device in this crash.

A Portland Police Bureau officer talks with the driver of the SUV where the vehicle was parked, a block away from the accident scene.

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