Town Topics
1 June 1983

Car Overturns

Three Are Injured. Three young men were injured, one with a fractured neck vertebra, when their car went out of control early Sunday morning on Snowden Lane and overturned. Police have charged the driver, Christopher E. Pey, 19,, 29 Duffield Place, with driving while intoxicated.

Ptl. Mark Emann, responding to a call at 12:42 a.m., arrived to see Pey’s Toyota Celica upside down and partially in the Snowden Lane roadway between Franklin Avenue and Rollingmead. A passenger. Quinton Beggs, 19, 42 White Pine Circle, had managed to climb out a broken rear window. He sustained a large contusion on his forehead and a laceration to his left hand.

Ptl. Emann observed Beggs, on his arrival, dragging a second passenger through the same window. The second passenger. Dudley Eppel, 20. 769 Cherry Valley Road, suffered a fractured neck and a laceration to his right arm. He was taken to Princeton Medical Center and admitted to the Intensive Care Unit for treatment. Ptl. Emann noted in his report that both were obviously intoxicated.

The driver, Pey, was still in the overturned car when members of the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad arrived two minutes later. Some 35 minutes later they had succeeded in removing the semi-conscious Pey from
the wreck and he was taken to the hospital for treatment of a bruise on the right cheek.

Ptl. Emann wrote in his report that he detected a strong odor of alcohol on the victim. When questioned in the hospital, Pey told the officer that he could not recall the accident. A sample of his blood was sent to a state police lab for analysis.

Ptl. Emann’s investigation revealed that the Pey car was traveling south at a high rate of speed on Snowden when it began to slide as it traveled on a curve at Franklin Avenue. Excessive speed and rain which had begun to fall were the factors that contributed to the loss of control, according to the officer.

The Pey car skidded off the roadway and then glanced off a tree. Skidding sideways, it continued back onto the roadway, then turned on its right side and rolled onto its roof before coming to a rest 83 feet from the tree. The car was a total loss.