Speed and booze kill again...click here for larger image
This photo dramatically shows what happens when a small car leaves the roadway and hits a large fixed object at a high rate of speed.  ST. MARY'S TODAY photo by Terrance Greenhow
...and the Redneck Theology kicks in as a reader assails news coverage of this latest booze cruise fatality on St. Mary's County roads...this reader claims she is a student at Salisbury State University 
letter to the editor


A giant utility pole went crashing through this car, killing the driver and cutting off the leg of the passenger. 
Photo courtesy of Mechanicsville Vol. Fire Dept.
COUNTRY LAKES --- A Hollywood woman was killed in a Saturday morning wreck into a utility pole; a Mechanicsville man found dead in wreck on Cobb Island Road two hours after crashing into SMECO box.
A Hollywood woman was killed on Saturday morning when the car in which she was driving left the road and cut a utility pole into two on Mechanicsville Road just after the 2 am closing hour for local bars, a very dangerous time to be on the roadways. 
St. Mary's Sheriff's Sgt. Theodore Belleavoine reports that speed and alcohol were factors in causing the driver, Paula Ann Phillips, 23, of Jones Wharf Road, to leave the roadway and take out a large transmission line pole which intersects Mechanicsville Road prior to Country Lakes. 
The pole went into the vehicle and sliced it open, ejected the passenger, Ralph Ignatius Thomas, Jr., and amputating his leg in the process.  Thomas was too intoxicated to know he had loss his leg and was flown in critical condition to PG shock trauma by Trooper 7.  SMECO crews had to go to Hughesville to obtain the large replacement pole and traffic was shut down for a considerable time period to make the installation.
Phillips was the second fatality of a 23-year-old woman in the past month in St. Mary's County, with Christine Harper, of Lexington Park, killed in a DWI wreck in Great Mills by William Heather, after the two left the Green Door Bar in Park Hall.     Police were not able to confirm where Phillips and Thomas had been prior to the wreck but believe that the two were on the way to Thomas' home on Dogwood Terrace in Country Lakes.


This photo shows the utility pole where it ended up in the center of the car, splitting it down the middle. 
Photo courtesy of Mechanicsville Vol. Fire Dept.