Six vehicles and seven people were involved in a crash at the intersection of Albany Avenue and Trout Brook Drive on Aug. 2, 2017.
By Ronni Newton
West Hartford Police are still completing the report on last week’s multi-vehicle crash that closed a busy intersection for hours, but Capt. Jeff Rose confirmed Wednesday that the crash happened when a state trooper on the way to a call collided with five other vehicles.
According to Rose, Sgt. Anthony Sciaretto, 34, a member of the Connecticut State Police SWAT team, was headed east on Albany Avenue in his official vehicle, a 2014 Ford Explorer. He was responding to a critical incident involving a barricaded person in Willimantic, Rose said.
Sciaretto, lights flashing and siren on, proceeded through the red light at the intersection with Trout Brook Drive, and collided with two vehicles that were heading south, Rose said. He then hit three more vehicles that were headed northbound on Trout Brook Drive. The northbound and southbound drivers had green lights.
According to the “Accident Information Summary,” three of the drivers involved in the crash sustained non-life-threatening injuries. Brian C. Zehnder, 40, of Southington was transported to UConn Health Center. Elizabeth A. Sottile, 61, of East Granby, and Linda Pryzbiski Adams, 63, of Suffield, were transported to St. Francis Hospital.
The final incident report is still in the process of being completed, Rose said.
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Albany and Trout Brook has seen many accidents, and probably 90% of them involve trying to beat the lights, mostly after they have turned red. Alas, during the school year, you can stand there on any given day, and you won’t have to wait long before a school bus loaded with kids will run the red light southbound on Trout Brook from KP. It’s just a matter of time before one of these accidents will tragically involve a school bus trying to save a couple of minutes, even if the crossing monitors are there to help. Commuter traffic blazing east-west down Albany at 50mph, and a lumbering, impatient bus, are not going to yield any happy outcomes. The busses need to relax and stop on a yellow light, not speed up. That being said, other drivers, hurrying to wherever, need to cut out following the 3 cars in front of them trying to make the left-turn lights after the light has already turned red; you’re just going to get jammed up in the middle of the intersection, and the folks barreling down the hill from Bishops Corner are gaining a lot of momentum, and are going to have a hard time not plowing into you. The long wait between green lights N/S on Trout Brook doesn’t help much either, and exacerbates the impulse to squeeze through the yellow light.