Marysville man involved in wrong-way crash in Alaska

Published 5:05 pm Friday, September 23, 2011

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An Anchorage police officer may be sent to Seattle for treatment of severe injuries he received Friday after a wrong-way driver collided with his patrol vehicle on a highway, authorities said.

Officer Randy Hughes, 41, sustained multiple fractures in the early-morning cra

sh on the Glenn Highway in Eagle River, a suburb north of Anchorage.

“He’s doing really well under the circumstances,” Police Chief Mark Mew said at an afternoon news conference. “We got him to laugh. He’s lucid and aware of everything that’s going on.”

The other driver, Gregory Fulling, 49, of Marysville, sustained skull fractures and was being treated at Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage. His condition was not immediately available, and the hospital didn’t immediately return a call.

Fulling was driving a rental sedan north on the southbound side of the highway, police said.

Mew said it appeared Fulling traveled 12 miles in the wrong lane, from near downtown Anchorage to the crash site, near the Hiland Road exit in Eagle River.

Hughes was responding to reports about the wrong-way driver when the crash occurred. He was able to avoid a head-on collision by veering left, Mew said. The sedan hit the cruiser on the passenger side and pushed it nearly 80 yards before Hughes’ vehicle came to a rest in a ditch.

“I think that if anyone had been sitting on the right-hand side, they would not have survived,” Mew said.

Hughes was pinned in his cruiser.

The speed the sedan was traveling at the time of the collision hasn’t been determined, Mew said.

Fulling’s sedan burst into flames after the crash, but he wasn’t burned, police spokesman Lt. Dave Parker said.

A responding officer, Daniel Sturkie, broke a window in the burning rental car and pulled Fulling out, Parker said. No one else was in the car.

Firefighters extricated Hughes from his vehicle after removing a car door, Parker said.

Police do not know where Fulling — who works in the Bellevue office of HDR Engineering Inc. — was coming from or where he was headed, Mew said.

Mew said a semi tractor hauling a trailer with propane was behind the cruiser but avoided the wreck.

Shortly before the collision, police received multiple calls involving the silver sedan, Parker said.

“One witness said it was speeding and not moving to avoid oncoming traffic,” he said. Another caller said he was run off the road by the vehicle.

Alcohol is believed to be a factor in the crash, police said. However, the investigation was continuing Friday and no charges had been filed.

Hughes has been an Anchorage officer since December 2008.