"All of a sudden, there was a little white car in my lane," the driver who survived the head-on crash said a day later.
Bruce Rosenberger, of Hellertown, had reason enough to feel sorry for himself, facing a compound fracture in his left leg around the knee and a broken right ankle.
Instead, speaking from the intensive-care unit at St. Luke's University Hospital in Fountain Hill, the 60-year-old said he was feeling bad for the 19-year-old who, according to police, had crashed into him Monday in Lower Saucon Township.
The teen, Quinton Gehman, of Frenchtown in Hunterdon County, was pronounced dead at the crash scene on Wassergass Road at Petran Lane.
"I feel bad for the guy," Rosenberger told lehighvalleylive.com from the ICU. "It's just really sad. I feel bad for his family."
Citing eyewitness accounts, Lower Saucon police in a news release late Tuesday afternoon said Gehman was driving east on Wassergass Road about 5:20 p.m. when he tried to illegally pass several vehicles in the opposing lane, on a blind curve.
Gehman's Toyota Prius collided head-on with Rosenberger's minivan, police said.
"I was just driving home, coming in on Wassergass Road," Rosenberger recalled. "There were a couple of cars coming the other way.
"All of a sudden, there was a little white car in my lane. It was like a second: Boom."
Rosenberger was trapped for about 40 minutes in the wreckage until firefighters freed him. Meanwhile, residents in the area had run to his aid, with a couple of women holding onto his hand.
"'Don't look at your leg. Don't look at your leg,'" he said they told him, "because the bone was sticking out."
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He faces surgery scheduled Wednesday to implant a rod in the leg, in addition to additional procedures on the ankle, he said.
"The ankle, my right ankle, is really, badly messed up," Rosenberger said. "It was broken and torn in a couple of places."
Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek responded and pronounced Gehman dead at the scene. The cause and manner of death remained pending further investigation late Tuesday afternoon, Lysek said.
Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.