An Arkansas State Trooper was involved in a collision with a driver going the wrong way on Interstate 40 early Monday morning.
Trooper First Class Roy Moomey of the Arkansas State Police was dispatched to a call early Monday of a driver who was driving the wrong way on a local interstate. Moomey was then involved in a collision with the driver, Arkansas Online reported Monday.
Matthew C. Choate, who was driving the vehicle the wrong way, was killed in the accident. Moomey suffered multiple broken bones and had to be intubated as a result. He is in serious but stable condition.
“He is intubated so he is not talking, but in good spirits,” Crawford County prosecutor Marc McCune said in a Facebook post, according to Arkansas Online. McCune later posted that Moomey underwent successful surgery on his leg and wrist, and that ankle surgery will be performed next.
“It will be a long recovery,” McCune wrote in another Facebook post.
A local Arkansas news station, 5 News, reported that another trooper on the scene said Moomey “tried to block the other vehicle as it was heading the wrong way on the interstate. That was when the vehicles collided.”
A spokesman for the state police, Bill Sadler, told Arkansas Online that reports Moomey purposefully drove into Choate’s vehicle to stop him have not been confirmed.
McCunce initially said that his understanding was the driver was drunk, but toxicology reports have not yet come back to confirm that claim.
This is not the first time Moomey has acted in such a heroic fashion. In January of 2015, Moomey saved a driver’s life when he pulled him from a burning vehicle, something he received a life saving award for during an Annual Arkansas State Police Awards Luncheon in May.
Donations or cards can be sent to the Crawford County Prosecutors Office at 206 S 3rd St, Van Buren, AR 72956, or to a special account being set up for Moomey at Bank of the Ozarks.
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