Sunday morning’s incident closed River Road for several hours from Taftsville through to the Pomfret town line. The actual incident was in the town of Hartford. (Eric Francis Photo)
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By Eric Francis, Standard Correspondent
TAFTSVILLE – Two teenagers from the Upper Valley survived a rollover crash sometime early Sunday morning that left a pickup truck submerged in the Ottauquechee River.
The mishap was first discovered just after 7 a.m. by a sharp-eyed passerby who called 911, not knowing if anyone was still inside the silver Toyota Tacoma. The pickup could just barely be seen from the riverbank, near the spot where there is a rope swing at a popular swimming hole about a quarter-mile above the Taftsville power dam.
Police arriving on the scene were unable to tell whether anyone was still inside the submerged vehicle, so the Hartford, Lebanon and Hanover fire departments called out their dive and swift water rescue teams.
“A mutual-aid recovery dive team came out. They searched the vehicle, no one was inside, and they found the registration which we tracked back to the registered owner and we made contact with him up at his residence,” Hartford Police Acting Sgt. Sean Fernandes said after the dripping truck was fished back up onto River Road by a Sabil & Sons wrecker crew.
Although the driver and his passenger are both juveniles, police have begun an investigation since both occupants apparently left the scene of the accident without alerting anyone to what had occurred.
“We found the vehicle with the passenger side collapsed in. It looks like it hit the rocks on its way over the bank. All of the windows were smashed out of it except for the windshield,” Fernandes said, adding, “It’s still under investigation right now. What we’ve got so far is a vehicle that was dumped into the river.”
Police did not release the names of the two teenagers, because they are both juveniles.
The stretch of River Road where the mishap occurred is part of the town of Woodstock right at the covered bridge but as you head west it almost immediately becomes part of Hartford and then, just past the accident scene is it actually part of Pomfret clear west to Cloudland Road where it re-enters Woodstock.