By Ryan Sabalow
The Redding Record Searchlight
COTTONWOOD, Calif. — A California Highway Patrol officer was injured late Friday afternoon and briefly trapped in his patrol car after it was hit at the scene of two earlier wrecks - one involving a fire truck - which blocked southbound lanes of rain-slickened Interstate 5.
The wrecks injured five other people and left six severely crunched and dented cars that had to be towed from the Gas Point Road off-ramp, which was blocked during rush-hour traffic.
The officer, identified as Dwight Havens by a CHP spokesman, was flown to Mercy Medical Center in Redding with moderate injuries, complaining of lower back pain.
Havens was inside his patrol car interviewing Calvin P. Ciapponi, a fire chief with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who was a witness from one of the earlier wrecks, when Havens’ patrol car was struck by a car that itself had been hit, according to a CHP collision report.
“Traffic was moving - it wasn’t like it was going 70 - but it was slowed down,” said CHP officer D. Anderson, who witnessed his fellow officer get hurt. “There was nothing unusual until I heard tires.”
The chain of events began at 3:32 p.m. Friday.
James Gradney, 28, of Red Bluff was pulling a utility trailer loaded with heavy horseshoeing equipment when he tried to merge onto the freeway, Anderson said.
With so much weight from the trailer pulling on the back of the truck, the pickup likely didn’t get traction when it tried to accelerate, Anderson said.
The truck careened out of control, flipped and landed in a ditch. Gradney wasn’t hurt, but firefighters still were dispatched to the scene.
One of the Cottonwood Fire Protection District trucks was about to leave when it was struck by another car that, like Gradney’s, had spun out of control when it accelerated while entering the freeway, Anderson said.
Havens and Anderson were about to clear that accident scene when a southbound driver, Michael J. Tancreto, 26, of Redding, answered his cell phone, Anderson said.
With his attention off the road and unable to stop in time, Trancreto’s car ran into the back of a car driven by Amy Lee McCarty, 26, of Redding, that had stopped for traffic in front of her. McCarty saw Tancreto’s car approaching from behind, but could not get out of the way in time.
The collision sent McCarty’s car spinning out of control, striking the driver’s side door of the CHP patrol car with its back end, Anderson said.
Tancreto, along with McCarty and her passenger, Matt C. Lande, 27, of Redding, suffered minor injuries, the collision report says.
One of the firefighters at the scene frantically jumped out of the way of McCarty’s oncoming car and cut his hand in his leap, Anderson said.
The CHP officer heard the oncoming collision, but was unable to move his patrol vehicle out of the way in time, the collision report says. Ciapponi suffered minor injuries.
Tancreto’s car ended up in the median between the north- and southbound lanes.
Alcohol was not a factor in the collisions, the CHP report says.
Copyright 2009 Record Searchlight