4 hurt in city after truck plunges off I-93 onramp

A tractor-trailer merging onto southbound Interstate 93 yesterday barreled off a ramp, knocking a light pole onto a car on a ramp below, and plunged 50 feet to the Leverett Connector, where the wrecked truck landed on a sport utility vehicle, authorities said.

The crash, which slowed rush-hour traffic in much of the city, left the driver of the 2006 Mack tractor-trailer with life-threatening injuries, two people in different cars with minor injuries, and a firefighter with a shoulder injury, State Police and rescue officials said.

The truck driver, Scott R. Ballou , 42, of Westbrook, Maine, was in critical condition last night at Massachusetts General Hospital. The name of the company listed on the cab was Roman Trucking. An official at Alex Roman Trucking Inc. in Alberta, Canada, declined to comment. Troopers said Ballou was wearing a seat belt.

The driver of the SUV, Benjamin Hoffman , 20, of Arlington, said he was on his way to a class at Boston's Wentworth Institute of Technology when things began falling from the sky, pelting his 2000 Mitsubishi Montero. Then, he saw the truck screaming down. It slammed into the front of his SUV, ripping off the hood and raining shattered glass all over him.

"At first, I thought something collapsed, like when the ceiling came down in the Big Dig tunnel," he said in a phone interview last night after being released from Mass. General. "It didn't seem real. I'm so lucky. The angels must have been looking after me. I don't know how I got out of it unscathed."

Rufus L. Simmons III, 39, of Charlestown, whose 2005 Acura TL was hit by the light pole, was also taken to the hospital with minor injuries. A woman in the Acura was uninjured. They could not be reached.

Major Michael Mucci of the State Police said investigators think Ballou was speeding. "We're leaning toward speed being a factor," he said.

The crash occurred about 4:10 p.m. when the tractor-trailer, which was carrying large rolls of paper, crashed through chain-link fences and rolled over concrete barriers on the ramp linking Route 1 from the Tobin Bridge with the southbound lanes of I-93, Mucci said. Rolls of paper, each weighing about 2,900 pounds, were strewn about the area.

The truck flipped over the left side of the ramp, sending the light pole about 20 feet to a ramp below that links the Leverett Connector with Route 1 north.

The truck then hit Hoffman's SUV in the southbound lanes of the Leverett Connector, which links I-93 south with Storrow Drive.

State Police closed the Leverett Connector for about three hours, backing up traffic on I-93 south to Medford Square and to Massachusetts Avenue on Storrow Drive, said Jeff Larson, general manager of SmartRoute Systems Inc., a traffic monitoring firm in Boston.

Troopers also closed I-93 south briefly to allow stranded drivers to back off the Leverett Connector.

It was the second time in less than a month that a vehicle rolled off one of the Big Dig ramps to the highway.

On March 18, a New Hampshire man was killed when the 1999 Toyota Camry in which he was a passenger flew off a ramp to the Tobin and landed about 70 feet below on the property of Boston Sand and Gravel. The crash occurred a few yards from yesterday's accident.

The Globe reported in 2002 that nearly a mile of concrete barriers on two Leverett Circle connector ramps was built as much as 2 inches below the federally approved height.

After the March 18 accident, Big Dig officials said the barriers in question were not near the accident site.

Jon Carlisle, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Highway Department, declined to comment on whether there were flaws in the ramp system.

Mucci said video cameras along the roadway probably recorded the crash .