Bangor man crashes car during street race

BANGOR – A motorist who was ejected from a car Thursday morning when it struck a tree was relatively unhurt and told police that he was racing with a motorcycle on Union Street shortly before he crashed.

Walter Dunakin Jr., 24, of Bangor faces several charges in connection with the late morning accident but suffered relatively minor injuries even though he was ejected through the window of the 1990 Ford Mustang. The car ended up wrapped around a tree, and the front passenger side of the car was caved in.

Motorists and Bangor police Officer Butch Moor found Dunakin on the lawn of a home at the corner of Union and 18th streets and they steadied him until an ambulance arrived.

Dunakin complained of injuries to his left arm. He was treated at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor. A hospital nursing supervisor said early Thursday evening that he had been released.

Moor talked to the Bangor man who said he and a motorcyclist were stopped at the traffic signal at Union Street and Vermont Avenue. When the light turned green, both vehicles accelerated along the strip of Union Street where the speed limit is 25 mph.

A car pulled out of a side street or driveway and Dunakin told police he swerved to avoid hitting it. The car skidded across the road, through two lanes of oncoming traffic although no other vehicles were struck on the usually heavily traveled road. The Mustang hit the tree and spun around it, peeling off bark, according to police. Accident reconstructionists from the Bangor Police Department were on scene taking measurements to determine how fast the car was going.

Moor charged Dunakin with driving to endanger, speeding in excess of 30 mph over the limit and operating a motor vehicle with a suspended registration. Sections of one lane on both sides of the road were blocked off as police investigated the accident.

A couple who lives on Union Street but who didn’t see the accident, said that many people travel on the road the way they do on Interstate 95: fast.

“It’s horrible,” said the man, who did not want to be identified.