A shaken-up motorist who reportedly saw a trooper come flying down I-495 before he crashed into a truck and flipped several times is calling out Mass State Police for its response to the “dangerous” situation.
Andover woman Jaime Kenney, 56, tells the Herald that the “horrific” incident could have been “so much worse.”
Kenney was heading down I-495 south Wednesday evening to go see her brother out in Shrewsbury, who was being honored for helping save a student’s life.
But on the way, Kenney and her significant other were stuck in heavy, rush-hour traffic when a GMC Sierra pickup truck came barreling in and rear-ended them at a high speed.
The airbags didn’t go off in their Porsche Cayenne, but Kenney reported smoke in their car and it was not drivable in the fast lane.
She says she called 911 at 6:15 p.m., telling the dispatcher that both their Porsche and the GMC truck needed tow trucks, as vehicles were flying by on the highway in Tewksbury, right before the Lowell Connector.
When a trooper didn’t respond for nearly 30 minutes, she called 911 again.
“It was taking forever, and it was such a dangerous situation on a really scary part of 495,” Kenney said. “It was a really busy night for State Police, but this was a very serious situation.”
Then moments later, her significant other told her to watch out. A trooper came flying in at about 80 mph, she estimated.
“He swerved to try to miss the (GMC) truck, but clipped the truck, and then rolled over six or seven times,” Kenney said. “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. I thought he was dead… It was horrific… Absolutely wild.”
The trooper extricated himself from the cruiser, and drivers were pulling over to help him. He was transported via ambulance to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
“The trooper was rushing in to help us, and I was just devastated to see him like that,” Kenney said. “It could have been so much worse.”
The cruiser crash was preventable, she said, stressing that it wouldn’t have happened if MSP’s response time was quicker to their initial crash.
“It’s not like we were stuck in rural Vermont,” Kenney said. “I just don’t understand the disconnect between me making a phone call on the side of I-495 in Tewksbury and them taking 30 minutes. What’s with our 911 system?”
State Police responded to several crashes on I-495 during rush hour Wednesday evening.
A Mass State Police spokesperson said in a statement, “The circumstances of the crash remain under investigation.”
