ORRINGTON, Maine — Moments after a motorcyclist slammed into the front of his car late Sunday afternoon, Craig Woodard of Bucksport got out of his damaged vehicle and surveyed the horrific scene in front of him.
“I turned back to make sure my eyes were telling the truth,” Woodard said Tuesday, recalling the crash scene on Route 15. “There was an unresponsive man lying in the middle of the road.”
Nearby was the man’s severed lower leg.
Woodard knew he had less than three minutes to prevent the man from bleeding to death.
“This is what I was trained to do. They drilled and drilled us,” Woodard said of the training he received in the U.S. Army to save lives on the battlefield by applying a tourniquet in order to stop severe bleeding.
Woodard, 25, said he joined the military six years ago and spent two years with the 1st Infantry Battalion before being discharged for medical reasons.
He was driving a 2002 Saturn toward his home on Sunday when a motorcycle operated by John Gerald, 22, of Carmel crossed the centerline into his path, according to a sheriff’s deputy. Breanne Mcintyre, 23, of Newburgh was riding on the back of Gerald’s bike. The couple was heading toward Brewer with a group of friends on motorcycles.
The collision happened at about 5:40 p.m. near Pleasant Hill Drive and damaged both vehicles beyond repair. Woodard’s front window was smashed, and the entire driver’s side was damaged.
“I saw them coming. They were pretty spaced apart, but I moved over to give them a couple extra feet. He might have been the third one back,” Woodard said of Gerald. “He just lost control of [his motorcycle]. I started to put my foot on the brake, but he hit me before I had time to hit my brake pedal.
“As he went out of control, I saw his face,” Woodard said, adding that he did not know that Gerald had a passenger until afterward. “He almost went under me, but he was able to upright the bike. He had his leg outstretched to try to steady the bike, and it ended up getting caught between the car and the bike.”
Woodard said he was driving about 35 mph and that the motorcycles were moving at about the same speed.
The chaotic crash scene included Gerald and Mcintyre’s motorcyclist friends and other people who stopped and tried to tend to the injured.
“I took my belt off, it was actually my original belt issued to me in basic [training for the Army], and after asking if anyone else was trained in how to apply a tourniquet, I tourniqueted him,” the former soldier said. “I also took off my shirt and covered what was left of his leg.”
He said he did that to prevent others from seeing it and because, “I had to get my head where it needed to be.”
“It was not a good situation. It was bad. I knew it had to be about him at that moment,” Woodard said later.
Others who stopped at the crash assisted with Gerald, who became responsive before the ambulance arrived, and with Mcintyre, who also was seriously injured.
“One witness held pressure on the [leg] wound and another lady held his head, just in case he broke his back,” Woodard said, adding that a third person helped to keep Gerald still. “He started to come out of it, so we sat there and held conversations with him until the ambulance arrived.”
The first thing Gerald wanted to know was, “What happened,” Woodard said.
The pressure and the tourniquet kept Gerald from hemorrhaging. Woodard added that he didn’t want Gerald to see he was missing a leg out of fear that it would put him into a worsened state of shock.
“He was complaining that his legs hurt, and he kept trying to sit up,” the Bucksport man said.
Others were attending to Mcintyre, “who was unresponsive” at the scene.
Gerald and Mcintyre on Tuesday both were listed in critical condition at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Neither was wearing a helmet, and investigators have not yet been able to interview them, Sgt. Bill Birch of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.
Birch said Woodard did well to “keep his head and do what he could do” after the collision.
Deputy Ray Goodspeed is handling the forensic mapping for the investigation, and Deputy Chris Watson is doing the reconstruction for the collision. Brewer and Orrington fire and ambulance crews assisted Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office personnel.
It wasn’t until he read Gerald’s name in the Bangor Daily News the next day that Woodard, who owns Woodard Tree Care in Bucksport, realized the injured man works with his father in the garage of a local car dealership.
“He’s the type of kid that this isn’t going to stop him,” Woodard said of Gerald, who he described as “a very tough man.”