A Dangerous Drive

A wicked burst of winter Tuesday sent cars and trucks sliding all over the highways and kept area police agencies busy for hours.

And two police officers suffered injuries when struck by a jackknifing semi in Van Buren County.

State police at the Bridgman post said I-94 was closed in both directions in Berrien County for about 45 minutes Tuesday afternoon while emergency crews cleaned up from crashes too numerous to count. Sgt. Ken High said Tuesday afternoon that fortunately the most serious injury from dozens of crashes in Berrien County was a broken leg.

High said two cars were involved in a crash on I-94 near mile marker 34 around 1:40 p.m. Both cars were traveling east when one rear-ended the other. Another crash happened around the same time on I-94 near the I-196 interchange.


“I don’t have details. I don’t have names. I don’t know how many accidents. We’ve just been so busy,” High said in a phone interview. “The lake effect snow came in, it started blowing, the roads got icy and visibility dropped.”

Deputy Chief Carl DeLand of the Benton Township Police Department said his officers handled four crashes in less than an hour when, starting around 1 p.m., there were near white-out conditions.

The weather-related accidents Benton Township police handled started at 12:55 p.m. on Red Arrow Highway at Roslin Road when Donnie Stamp, 32, of Coloma, lost control of his northbound car on Red Arrow and hit a utility pole.

Then at 1:13 p.m., a car driven by Peter Boumgarden, 27, of Grand Rapids was rear-ended by one driven by Kenneth Spoerl, 59, of Coloma, DeLand said. Both drivers were eastbound on I-94 near Roslin Road.

At the same time on I-94 near Territorial Road, Michael Hoover, 40, of Ellettsville, Ind., lost control of his eastbound car and hit a guard rail.

At 1:37 p.m., Maria Villegas, 42, of Benton Harbor lost control of her car while traveling west on Red Arrow Highway near Milo Street and collided with a semi truck that was stopped in the eastbound lane. The truck had stopped because another semi farther up the road was stuck at the top of the hill, DeLand said.

“That’s what we have so far. There might be more,” DeLand said. “That’s just our agency.”

DeLand said he does not believe any of the drivers in the crashes Benton Township handled went to the hospital.

“I don’t think any tickets were issued,” he said.

Robert Pelton of Watervliet said he found the Red Arrow Highway detour impassible after he exited from I-94.

“It looks like it’s wet, but it’s really icy,” he said of Red Arrow Highway on Tuesday afternoon.

Van Buren crash

Van Buren County Sheriff’s Deputy Duane Brigham suffered a dislocated shoulder while Paw Paw Police Sgt. Kirk Goodrich had a compound ankle fracture, Sheriff Dale Gribler reported.

“It could have been much worse. They had an angel looking out for them,” the sheriff said. Both men were taken to Bronson LakeView Hospital in Paw Paw, Gribler said.

State police Sgt. Tom Brower of the Paw Paw post said accidents and slide-offs forced the closure of a 10-mile stretch of I-94 in eastern Van Buren County for most of the afternoon, from Mattawan to 4 miles west of Paw Paw.

“They had a bunch of slide-offs and accidents,” Brower said. “It didn’t look that bad, and it was not that much snow, but it was just wet and it froze over.”

“It was just a flash freeze,” said the sheriff. “It was the ice.”

The two police officers were working on a traffic crash near Paw Paw and were about 20 feet apart when the semi’s driver lost control and the truck slid into the police officers’ path, Gribler said.

The semi driver is from Canada, Gribler said.

“He should have known better,” he said.

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