By Patric Hedlund, TME

Alcohol was suspected as a factor in a solo car crash that closed down the intersection of Woodland Drive and Mil Potrero Highway in Pine Mountain Club for over six hours Sunday, Feb. 6.

A black 2017 Ford Fusion driven by Bryan Quinn Washington of Bakersfield appeared to slice through the night like a missile as it rocketed downhill at high speed on Woodland Drive at 2:56 a.m.

The car left the road and crashed through two vertical wooden poles. Carried by momentum, the vehicle flipped over and rolled across Mil Potrero Highway, landing upside down in the ravine on the north side of the roadway. Neighbors who heard the crashes called 911.

Bundles of overhead wires fell down across the intersection.

A resident with surveillance video of the incident showed the clip to this reporter.

Personnel from California Highway Patrol …(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

Above: Nigel Sawrey, his mother Elaine Salmon and her mother, Alice, look at the pole shattered by a car speeding down Woodland Drive that left the road, hit the pole, then tumbled across Mil Potrero Highway.

CHP Officer David Finney and an AT&T contractor survey the lines on the road at the Woodland Drive and Mil Potrero Highway intersection after a car took out support poles early Sunday
morning, Feb. 6.

Questions about the safety of having so much heavy hardware overhead on a vital roadway intersection, at the bottom of a steep grade, were part of the Sunday morning chatter at Woodland Drive and Mil Potrero Highway.

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This is part of the February 11, 2022 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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