Winslow man killed in first fatal moose-car crash of 2018 in Maine

A Winslow man was killed late Friday night when his car hit a moose on a highway in northern Maine.

Donnie Wilcox, 54, died when his Subaru struck a bull moose in the southbound travel lane of Interstate 95 in the Penobscot County town of Medway, according to Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.

It was the first fatal crash involving a moose and a vehicle in Maine in 2018, McCausland said in a statement Saturday night.

Wilcox’s car hit the moose 2 miles south of the Medway exit around 10 p.m. Friday. The moose was thrown into the windshield on impact and the animal peeled back the car’s roof, McCausland said. There were no witnesses to the crash, but passers-by found it shortly after it happened, he added.

Wilcox died at the scene and the moose also was killed, McCausland said.

Moose-vehicle collisions have been trending downward in recent years. In 2017, there were 287 moose crashes, less than half the number 10 years prior. One person a year has been killed in vehicle crashes with moose since 2014.

The I-95 corridor north of Bangor, including Medway, is a high-hit area for moose. Last year there were clusters of moose-car crashes on Route 201 in Somerset County and along Route 11 and Route 1 in Aroostook County.

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