Driver of First Med ambulance charged in Wednesday night wreck

The driver of a First Med ambulance will be charged with an unsafe moving violation after he collided with a delivery truck on N.C. 11 South Wednesday evening.

Tpr. Jackie Rogers of the N.C. Highway Patrol said Thursday Joseph Heck of Greene County will be charged with making an improper lane change, for his attempt to pass an East Carolina Vending Services delivery truck driven by Ira Grizzard of Kinston.

Around 6 p.m. Wednesday, the ambulance was in the left-hand lane of northbound N.C. 11 near the intersection with Williams Loop Road, about half a mile south of the N.C. 11/55 split. The truck was next to it in the right-hand lane. Both were heading toward Kinston.

“He was just going to change lanes before he got to the light, to get in the right lane, and he never saw (the truck),” Rogers said of Heck.

Heck clipped the truck as he tried to pass, causing the ambulance to flip over and crash into a utility pole along the highway. The pole was split in half, and power was knocked out to about 3,000 Progress Energy customers in southwestern Lenoir County.

Lights went out as far north as Skinner’s Bypass; Moss Hill resident Amie Radford came by to see her mother, Gay Basden, who lives near the accident scene. Radford said even she lost power.

Basden said her home was shaking after the crash.

“I thought my house was fixing to explode,” she said.

Heck and his passenger and coworker Aimee McKinney of Grifton were injured in the crash. Both were taken by EastCare helicopter to Vidant Medical Center in Greenville.

Rogers said Heck was treated and released Wednesday night; Barbara Dunn, spokeswoman for Vidant, said McKinney remained in the hospital Thursday in good condition.

Grizzard declined medical treatment at the scene.

“He was shaken up,” Rogers said of Grizzard. “Everybody looked over him; he didn’t have any signs of physical injury, and he said he wasn’t hurt.”

Nearby resident Brittney Medley, 14, saw the accident happen as she stood near the highway talking to a friend on the telephone.

“I knew it was going to be an accident,” she said.

Her older sister Dianna saw her standing outside under power lines that were sparking, and yelled for her to get away.

Her companion Thomas Hill, a former firefighter and U.S. Marine Corps sniper, called 911.

“I’ve never seen a wreck that bad,” said Hill, who spent a little more than two years serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Law enforcement officers closed down N.C. 11 between the split with N.C. 55 West and the accident scene while Progress Energy crews worked to restore power.

Power came on and the highway was reopened around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Nearby residents sat in darkened homes, waiting for the lights to come back on.

Jimmie Hughes didn’t see the accident, but he heard the after-effects.

“What I heard, it sounded like the sizzle of electricity,” he said. “It sounded like someone being shocked.”

Hughes’ daughter Gracie wasn’t happy about being in a dark house.

“The lights went out and I was scared in the dark!” she said.

David Anderson can be reached at 252-559-1077 or danderson@freedomenc.com. Follow him on Twitter at DavidFreePress.