Two drivers injured in head-on, rollover crash on Turnpike

 

Note: This story was updated at 3:13 p.m.

Two drivers were injured in a head-on rollover crash on Oak Ridge Turnpike on Sunday night.

The crash was reported at about 10:54 p.m. Sunday near West Lincoln Road.

The Oak Ridge Police Department said Jeffery Wooten, 40, of Oak Ridge was traveling west on the four-lane Turnpike in a 2013 Ford Focus when the car crossed the median and struck a 1996 Ford Ranger head-on. The pickup was driven by Dexter Selby, 19, of Crossville.

The collision caused the Ranger to roll over into the ditch on the south side of the Turnpike, the ORPD said in a press release. The truck came to a stop upside-down.

Wooten and Selby were both injured and taken to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, officers said.

Both vehicles sustained severe damage, the ORPD said, and the investigation is ongoing. The crash was on the west end of town in the eastbound lanes between Oak Ridge Fire Station Number 1 and the Dollar General store.

A medical helicopter appeared to land at Oak Ridge High School at about 11:25 p.m.

Barry Cooper lives on West Lincoln Road and heard the crash.

“I heard a bump and then I heard several—I guess that’s when he crossed it (the median)—and then I heard a boom,” Cooper said. “I ran outside barefooted.”

The red Ford Focus was “smashed up pretty bad,” he said, and the pickup truck was off the side of the road and upside-down.

Besides the ORPD, the Oak Ridge Fire Department also responded to the crash. A wheel that apparently came loose from one of the vehicles lay in the one of the eastbound lanes, and debris was scattered about.

The eastbound lanes of the Turnpike were closed as emergency personnel investigated the crash.

More information will be added as it becomes available.