A Sweet Home man was injured Thursday afternoon, April 22, when his car left the roadway on Highway 20 and rolled “multiple” times, fire officials and police said.
According to Sweet Home Fire and Ambulance District, at about 4:30 p.m. Thursday, fire crews responded to a report of a single-vehicle rollover on Highway 20 near milepost 23 and Brushwood Road.
According to Oregon State Police, multiple callers reported a vehicle leaving the roadway, striking a ditch and going airborne before rolling into a ditch filled with water, where it came to rest upright with the operator partially ejected.
OSP said the car, a 1998 Nissan Sentra, driven by Jackie Dean Ottre Jr., 42, of Sweet Home, had been heading eastbound and drifted across the westbound lanes of travel before leaving the road.
SHFAD reported that the culvert in which the car stopped was 60 yards and across the railroad tracks from the highway.
SHFAD contacted Albany & Eastern Railroad Co., which owns the tracks, which immediately shut down that section to train travel, the fire department said.
Ottre sustained serious injuries and had become entrapped, the department statement said.
“Fire crews utilized hydraulic extrication tools to remove the roof of the vehicle to gain access to, and extricate the patient.”
Ottre was taken by ambulance to Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center in Corvallis.