911 call for help leads first-responders to the rescue of 93-year-old driver

NC GAZETTE / WBRT RADIO
STAFF REPORT

Saturday, Feb. 9, 2019 — A 911 call from a passer-by Thursday night may have saved the life of a 93-year-old man whose car ran off US31E, the Louisville Road and down a steep embankment.

Just before midnight Thursday, deputies with the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office were dispatched to the area of Louisville Road and Hialeah Drive to check on a report of a vehicle off the roadway. A passer-by spotted a vehicle’s emergency flashers of a 2009 Nissan that ran off the road, down an embankment, through a gate and into the woods along a creek bed.

Deputies Reece Riley and Levis Preston found the driver, Carl Keown, 93, of Jeffersonville, alert and conscious, but complaining of feeling pain and being cold. The victim was provided with emergency cold weather gear by a deputy and a blanket from a nearby resident. Keown told deputies he had been trapped for at least 6 to 8 hours.

Nelson County EMS and the Nelson County Fire Department were called to the scene. Firefighters extricated Keown from his vehicle, and he was carried out by deputies, firefighters and EMS personnel to a waiting EMS ambulance. He was treated at the scene before he was transported to University Hospital.

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