Crash ejects workers from bucket truck

WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. (WIVB) - Two Town of Amherst employees were seriously injured Monday morning, at Main and Mill Streets in Williamsville.

The men were changing an ad banner from a bucket truck, when they were struck by a tractor trailer heading east on Main Street. The top of the semi truck made contact with the boom, ejecting the two men in the bucket to the ground.

Fifty-two-year-old Paul Mordaunt and forty-six-year-old Scott Charleson were seriously injured, but one source tells News 4 Senior Correspondent Rich Newberg that they are both expected to survive their injuries. The men were taken to ECMC with multiple injuries.

The male truck driver was accompanied by a female and a child according to police. He was driving a C.R. England Global Transportation truck and was on the way back to Syracuse, according to authorities.

Amherst Town Highway Superintendent Bob Anderson tells News 4 the two town signal division workers who were ejected from their work platform, about 20 feet above Main Street, are “alert, conscious and talking with their families.”

Creekview Manager Barb Pellittieri's second floor office is almost eye level to where the men were working. She tells News 4 she saw one of the men move his leg and arm after he had hit the ground, which was somewhat reassuring to her. She had picked her head up just after the truck hit the platform “I saw all the firemen and then all the streets were just lined with people trying to see what had happened.”

Jacques Wilcox, a carpenter who works in the village, had talked with one of the crew members just before they took down the Oktoberfest banner and replaced it with a cancer awareness banner. Wilcox said, “they were chipper, they were about their business, it was business as usual.”

“It’s unbelievable” Wilcox said, “it’s just very sad to see your friends get injured like this.”