Corzine stable after accident

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Gov. Corzine was seriously injured Thursday night when his Chevy Tahoe, in an attempt to avoid an accident, swerved into a guardrail on the Garden State Parkway. Officials said the governor, who was airlifted to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, did not suffer any life-threatening injuries.

Corzine had been on his way from an Atlantic City speech to host a private meeting between radio show host Don Imus and the Rutgers University women's basketball team at Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion in Princeton.

During a news conference at Cooper on Thursday night, Steven Ross, head of the hospital's trauma unit, said the governor was in stable condition in the intensive-care unit, with fractured ribs, a broken left leg, and chest injuries. He did not suffer any head injuries.

He was in surgery and was expected to be hospitalized overnight.

Former governor and current State Senate President Richard J. Codey was serving as New Jersey's acting governor, Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said.

Also injured was Robert Rasinski, the state trooper who was driving Corzine's Tahoe, who was also treated at Cooper. Officials said Rasinski asked that his injuries not be disclosed.

Corzine's personal assistant, Samantha Gordon, was in the backseat of the car behind Rasinski, and was not seriously injured.

Addressing reporters at Cooper during the news conference, Col. Joseph R. "Rick" Fuentes, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said that the accident occurred near mile marker 43.5 shortly after 6 p.m., when a red pickup truck cut off a white Dodge Ram and forced it into the path of the governor's sport-utility vehicle.

Rasinski swerved to try to avoid that vehicle and lost control of the Chevrolet, sending it into the center median and striking a guardrail, Fuentes said.

Corzine was seated in the front seat, and state police were investigating whether he was wearing a seat belt.

After the accident, the red pickup truck did not stop, and police were looking for its driver, Fuentes said.

Witnesses told police that the man behind the wheel of the red pickup - the vehicle responsible for the crash - had been seen driving erratically before the accident. The driver of the Dodge Ram stopped and gave statements to police.

At mile maker 43.5 point, the Garden State Parkway is a four-lane highway divided by a wide grassy median bisected by a metal guardrail. Its speed limit is 65 m.p.h. The Garden State Parkway, which runs along the Jersey Shore, is a toll road and investigators were expected to look at toll-booth cameras to see whether the vehicle was caught on film.

Fuentes said that Rasinski had done a "tremendous job" maintaining what control he could over the Chevrolet. He added that conditions were dry at the time, and that speed and alcohol did not appear to be factors.

Officials did not, however, indicate how fast the vehicles had been traveling.

At the scene in Galloway Township, the SUV was smashed up against the guardrail along the median of the parkway. All the doors were open, and the front driver's side had been smashed in.

State police were investigating with the help of a high-powered mobile lamp.

A trooper, flashlight in hand, was seen combing the woods and the grass near where the accident occurred, and police were looking at heavy skid marks in the SUV's track.

As night fell, the accident investigation backed traffic up for nearly three miles, with only one lane getting by.

Corzine was returning in a two-car caravan from public events in Atlantic City, including a speech before the New Jersey Conference of Mayors at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort.

Galloway Township Mayor Thomas Bassford said a swarm of Galloway Township emergency medical technicians and firefighters from the Pomona Volunteer Fire Department were called to assist with the accident, which he called "extremely bad."

"It was a little surprising to hear it happened here, almost right in my own backyard," said Bassford, who lives about a half-mile from the accident scene.

"And what really worried me is when I heard that the governor had been taken to Cooper by chopper when we have two hospitals, one with a trauma center, virtually minutes from where the accident happened."

When asked why Corzine was taken to a Camden hospital instead of closer hospitals in the Atlantic City area, Fuentes said that it was a short flight by medical helicopter. "This is a great trauma center," Fuentes said.

Corzine is the third New Jersey governor in recent history to suffer a broken leg.

Jim E. McGreevey broke his leg in a fall from Cape May's promenade in 2002, and was also airlifted to a hospital in another part of the state, Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in New Brunswick.

Christine Todd Whitman broke her leg in 1992 while on a ski trip in Switzerland.