UPDATE: CHARGES PENDING IN SATURDAY CRASH, WESTFALL REMAINS CRITICAL, VICTIMS IDENTIFIED - Four Life-Flighted After Rt. 5 Pile-Up

(05/18/2011)

Rt. 5 crash causes intensive response, driver critically injured

By Bob Weaver

UPDATE 5/18 - State Police are saying charges are pending in a two-car crash that happened Saturday near Grantsville sending four victims to a Charleston hospital by chopper.

Clyde "Pete" Paul Westfall, 32, is still in critical condition Tuesday at Charleston Area Medical Center, according to a hospital spokesperson.

Trooper J. E. Kincaid said investigation of the accident is continuing.

Trooper Kincaid released the names of the driver and occupants of the second vehicle involved in the crash.

In the crash, Lester Selmon, 31, and his wife Denise Selmon, 27, and their two male children, ages 5 and 7. Mrs. Selmon was not hospitalized, but the other three Selmon family members were life-flighted to CAMC, where sources describe their conditions as stable.

ORIGINAL STORY - A Calhoun man, about 32, was critically injured when he crashed Saturday morning with a vehicle on State Rt. 5, about three miles east of Grantsville.

He was extracted from his vehicle by members of the Grantsville Volunteer Fire Department using saws and Jaws-of-Life.

It was a tangled mess of metal as the vehicles came to rest on a bridge.

Firemen use extraction equipment to remove injured driver

Three individuals in the other vehicle received injuries, including one male, about 32, and two children, about seven to nine-years-old.

All four were life-flighted by chopper to medical centers, the nature of their injuries is unknown. One person was not injured

It was a record number of choppers responding to a single scene in the county.

Five ambulances responded to the crash from Calhoun EMS, Minnie Hamilton Health System and Gilmer County EMS.

Trooper J.E. Kincaid is investigating the crash.

Accident response included five ambulances, four
choppers, a fire department and the WV State Police

Patient being loaded on HealthNet
chopper at Wayne Underwood Field