State Police say say one of its Troopers is to blame for a traffic collision outside Orwigsburg on Saturday morning.
According to a crash report from State Police-Schuylkill Haven, a marked PSP Ford Explorer was headed north on Route 61 responding to a “high priority call” with its emergency lights on and siren activated just before 10 a.m.
As the Trooper behind the wheel, identified as Cole Weil, 26, approached the intersection of Route 61 and Route 443, near The Freeze restaurant in North Manheim Twp., police say he failed to stop at a red light and yield to traffic from the jughandle headed east on Route 443 toward Orwigsburg.
At that time, a Jeep driven by 46-year-old Laura Bosack, of Pottsville, who had a 13-year-old girl in the vehicle at the time, collided with the State Police vehicle, hitting it with the front 9 o’clock position. Bosack was headed east from that jughandle. Police say Bosack had the right of way at the time of the crash.
Bosack’s vehicle stopped immediately upon impact. Weil’s police vehicle spun around and ended up a few feet from the site of the crash.
Both Weil and Bosack suffered minor injuries, police say, and were taken to Geisinger-St. Luke’s Hospital nearby for treatment. The child on board with Bosack was uninjured.
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Sharon Freeman
January 16, 2024 at 12:20 pm
For Pete’s sake! He was on a high priority call with emergency lights and siren. When did the law changed that vehicles don’t give high priority calls the right of way? The trooper shouldn’t have been held at fault.
Mike
January 17, 2024 at 6:29 am
ALL emergency vehicles (police, fire, EMS) are still required to obey traffic laws when going lights and sirens. The lights and sirens simply give notice to other drivers to yield to the emergency vehicle. In this case it sounds like the Trooper never bothered to clear the intersection to make sure there was no traffic. It’s entirely possible the other driver didn’t hear the siren because the Trooper was driving too fast – it’s called the doppler effect and is taught to all emergency responders when they learn how to drive.