Driver dies in single-car Route 82 collision

CHAMPION — A man was apparently dead at the scene of a single-car accident at about 9 a.m. Monday on state Route 82 just west of the state Route 45 exit.

Before the car left the highway, however, it weaved back and forth many times across the median heading west, a witness said. Tracks in the snow showed that the car entered and left both the eastbound and westbound lanes several times.

The vehicle eventually left the highway after traveling a distance in the eastbound lanes going the wrong direction.

It traveled through the grass before breaking through a metal fence and stopping about 100 feet back in the woods, after striking several trees.

The first police officer to arrive at the scene said he was unable to get inside the vehicle and was planning to break out the window to get inside.

Paramedics eventually removed the body from the vehicle with a sheet over the man’s face and placed it inside an ambulance.

“He went into the median and came back over and was zig-zagging,” a woman said as she stood alongside the highway.

The woman, who declined give her name, was traveling east when the car started heading toward her in the wrong direction.

The car almost hit hers, she said, noting that the man in the car was slumped over as the vehicle left the highway the last time and went into the woods at a high rate of speed.

The vehicle left the road just east of the Leavitt Road overpass in Warren Township.