Federal agency probes Austintown cruiser fire

The Austintown Police
Department’s Crown
Victorias now have fire
suppression devices.

AUSTINTOWN — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating why a township police officer’s gas tank exploded, severely burning him in the resulting fire that swept through the cruiser.

Police Chief Bob Gavalier told township trustees Monday that the agency indicated it should release its report in two months.

Gavalier said after the meeting that the investigation isn’t routine. He said he notified the NHTSA about the accident, and the agency decided to investigate.

Gavalier said he learned about the possibility of getting the agency involved when he attended an Ohio State Highway Patrol meeting about safety issues with its cruisers a month and a half ago.

He said the OSHP invited him to the meeting in Columbus to talk about the Nov. 11, 2007, accident on North Meridian Road that injured patrolman Ross Linert, 48. It was there he met a member of the NHTSA, who told him that if he filed a complaint online, the agency might decide to investigate.

Gavalier said two crash investigators from the agency’s Buffalo, N.Y., office came to Austintown on Wednesday and examined the gas tank.

Linert spent nearly two months in a medically induced coma at the burn unit of Akron Children’s Hospital after the accident, which burned 40 percent of his body. He had several operations for skin grafts.

He is now at home, recovering.

The OSHP uses the same make and model of cruiser that makes up most of Austintown’s 12-car fleet — the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor.

The car is popular with police departments throughout the country, but is also controversial because of gas tank explosions that have occurred when the car is rear-ended.

Dozens of officers have been killed or injured in the resulting fire of such crashes, says the Center for Auto Safety in Washington, D.C. The car is designed with the gas tank outside the protection of the rear axle, in the car’s “crush zone,” the center says.

In the crash that hurt Linert, Adrien N. Foutz, 22, of Girard struck his car from behind. She has been accused of having a blood alcohol content of more than three times the legal limit. She is awaiting trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on a charge of aggravated vehicular assault.

The Austintown Crown Victorias now have fire suppression shells fit over their gas tanks. The devices can be removed and used again as old cruisers are phased out of the fleet. The polymer shells release a cloud of fire-suppressant powder after a cruiser is rear-ended.

The OSHP troopers union and the state agreed in November to use those same fire suppression devices to protect state troopers.