Woman OK after crash on I-395 bridge

BREWER – A Connecticut woman injured Thursday in a three-vehicle crash on the Veterans Remembrance Bridge was scheduled to be released from the hospital on Friday.

Mary T. Kelley, 59, of Meriden, Conn., was taken to St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor, where she remained overnight for treatment of hand fractures and other injuries suffered in the accident, according to Sgt. John Skroski of the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Department.

The accident was the subject of much media attention Thursday because one of the vehicles involved, a bus, was carrying members of the stage crew for 3 Doors Down, a nationally known rock band that performed at the University of Maine earlier this week.

According to Skroski, the accident occurred about 3 p.m., just before the midpoint of the Veterans Remembrance Bridge, near a point where I-395 changes from two lanes to three.

Kelley, who was visiting relatives in Brewer this week, was traveling toward Bangor when the Chevrolet sport utility vehicle she was driving struck the right front section of the band’s 1994 Coach tour bus while apparently trying to pass a 1999 Freightliner tractor-trailer, Skroski said. It appeared that Kelley didn’t see the bus until it was too late.

After hitting the bus, Kelley’s vehicle careened into the center guardrail and then back across the bridge into the path of the tractor-trailer. The vehicle then spun into a guardrail along the side of the bridge and hit the guardrail head-on. No one else involved in the crash was injured.