By Guy Leonard, guyleonard@countytimes.net
HOLLYWOOD, Md. (July 14, 2011)—Two days after she was badly injured in a three-car crash, County Commissioner Todd Morgan said his wife Maria is still unconscious but doctors told him her vital signs were “normal and strong.”
“Her condition remains critical,” Morgan told The County Times on Wednesday. “The doctor told me that this could take days or weeks when the body goes into this kind of condition.”
Police say that Maria Morgan’s Audi TT was struck in the driver’s side by a Ford F-150 driven by Michelle Mason Malone, 26, from Mechanicsville, as Morgan was making a left turn onto Route 235 from Millstone Landing Road.
Police report that witnesses said Morgan had a green light while Malone had a red signal as she was traveling northbound on Three Notch Road.
The collision’s force drove Morgan’s car into a 2005 Nissan Armada driven by Regina Eckley, 50, also from Mechanicsville, that was in the left turn lane of southbound Three Notch Road, police reported.
A state police helicopter flew Morgan to Prince George’s Hospital shock trauma center in Cheverly for treatment for life threatening injuries, while Malone was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital. Eckley was not injured, police reported.
Police do not believe alcohol or speed were factors in the early morning collision, which tied up traffic on Route 235 north for four hours.
Todd Morgan (R-Lexington Park) said he was on his way to work and came upon the immediate aftermath of the collision and soon realized it was his wife’s car.
“You don’t know the feeling when your wife is on that stretcher … I said, ‘Oh my God that’s my wife!’” Morgan said.
In a mass e-mail sent out Tuesday, Morgan said that his wife was knocked out on impact in the crash and suffered from brain contusions, multiple broken bones in her hip and lower body as well as fractured ribs and bruised spleen.
But doctors had been able to measure the pressure on her brain, he said in the message, and that the pressure appeared to be normal.
Morgan said he is continuing to go to work in the morning for brief periods but goes to visit his wife everyday and reads to her.
“It’s just so she hears a voice,” Morgan said, who thanked the emergency responders for their work and also the community for their outpouring of support.
“It makes you cry … it makes me so happy,” Morgan said of support from rescue volunteers and the community at large.