By Michael O. Allen and Caroline Hendrie, Record Staff Writers | Sunday, May 19, 1991
The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A04
An out-of-control car careered off Sylvan Avenue in Englewood Cliffs on Saturday and smashed into a telephone booth, severely injuring a 49-year-old Fort Lee man.
Kazuo Matsumoto of 8 Buckingham Road was listed in critical condition at University Hospital in Newark, where he was rushed by helicopter after the 12:10 p.m. accident.
The driver, Nathan Andors, 73, of 2200 N. Central Road, Fort Lee, suffered a minor cut to the forehead and was treated at Englewood Hospital and released, police said.
No charges had been filed in connection with the accident as of Saturday evening, said Lt. William Gallagher of the Englewood Cliffs police.
One bystander, who declined to be identified, said that Matsumoto was knocked about 25 feet in the air when the car struck him and that his glasses and shoes flew in different directions.
Andors car, southbound on Sylvan Avenue, uprooted the telephone booth, which was in front of a bus stop about 20 feet from the corner of Bayview Avenue. The car also knocked down a traffic control box, exposing electrical wires, and came to rest with its front end buried in a Public Service Electric and Gas Co. utility pole.
Gallagher said Matsumoto was talking on the phone with a member of his family when the accident occurred.
A University Hospital spokeswoman said that Matsumoto underwent surgery Saturday afternoon and that he was in critical condition when he left the operating room at about 6:30 p.m. Family members visited Saturday evening, said Dorothy Crews, assistant director of nursing.
In a ride that took less than five minutes, Matsumoto was taken to the hospital in the state-owned Northstar emergency medical evacuation helicopter. University Hospital is the only North Jersey medical facility classified as a Level I trauma center, equipped to handle the most serious cases, said John Nichols, a hospital flight medic who treated Matsumoto.
Nichols said the helicopter and its crew were in Somerset for a training seminar when they were summoned at 12:26 p.m. to the accident scene. The helicopter landed on the hospital’s roof at 12:56 p.m.
The Northstar helicopter has been used with increasing frequency in Bergen County recently, but it is still not common for the helicopter to be summoned to the area, Nichols said.
The accident disrupted traffic in both directions on Sylvan Avenue, which is Route 9W.
For about four hours, southbound traffic was diverted onto Route 9W north through the parking lot of the executive offices of the Prentice-Hall publishing company. Northbound traffic was also diverted.
Both northbound lanes were reopened about 3:40 p.m., and one southbound lane was reopened at 4 p.m. The remaining southbound lane was barricaded until about 4:45 p.m. to allow workers to repair electrical wires.
Keywords: FORT LEE; MOTOR VEHICLE; TELEPHONE; ACCIDENT; ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS; VICTIM; KAZUO MATSUMOTO, NATHAN ANDORS
ID: 17343699 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)
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