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Romayne Smith Fullerton was walking her dog with a friend in a wildlife preserve southwest of St. Thomas on Tuesday morning when she heard an “enormous thump.”
Smith Fullerton said she was in the Fingal Wildlife Management Area about 8 a.m. when she and her friend “heard a big screech of tires and an enormous thump . . . and then we heard sirens.”
She came out of the park to see nearly a dozen police vehicles near a badly damaged vehicle in a field.
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“It was so flattened I couldn’t tell what it was,” Smith Fullerton said. “It didn’t look like someone walked away from it.”
She said she thought it was strange there were no ambulances at the scene and soon noticed an OPP officer holding a long gun at a nearby home.
Officers responded to a single-vehicle rollover near Fingal and Scotch Lines, where the driver had fled the scene, Elgin OPP Const. Brett Phair said.
“There is not believed to be any threat to public safety,” Phair said by email.
A badly damaged white SUV was on its side in a field about 300 metres from the entrance to the wildlife area. A steel trailer, which appeared to have detached from the vehicle during the crash, was nearby.
The OPP urged the public to to avoid the area and expect a heavy police presence, saying more information would be provided when available.
Fingal Wildlife Management Area is a 292-hectare (720-acre) protected natural area that was a former Royal Canadian Air Force training station during the Second World War. The Crown land, co-managed by the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Elgin Stewardship Council, is used for hunting, hiking, research, environmental education and farming.
dcarruthers@postmedia.com
@DaleatLFPress
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