A serious crash near the entrance to MedStar St. Mary's Hospital in Leonardtown trapped a driver Wednesday afternoon, prompting rescue crews to pry open a car door and a Maryland State Police helicopter to fly one patient to a trauma center. The collision happened around 12:05 p.m. along Point Lookout Road, just outside the hospital's driveway.
First-arriving units confirmed two vehicles were involved in the crash, with one driver trapped inside, according to thebaynet.com. Rescue Squad 1 crews performed what firefighters call a door pop, removing a vehicle door to free the trapped driver. Maryland State Police Aviation Command's Trooper 7 landed at the hospital's helipad and airlifted one patient to an area trauma center, while a second patient was taken to a local hospital for treatment, the outlet reported.
Southern Maryland News Net, in its own reporting on the crash, placed the collision at Point Lookout Road and Lawrence Avenue and said emergency responders were dispatched to a reported head-on motor vehicle collision with injuries. The outlet noted that authorities warned drivers to expect extended delays in the area while crews worked.
Scene Cleared Within the Hour
Fire and rescue personnel operated at the scene for approximately one hour, per the same account from thebaynet.com. The response unfolded directly outside one of the region's main hospitals, meaning the helicopter did not need to be dispatched to a remote landing zone — it launched and landed right at the MedStar St. Mary's Hospital helipad to collect the more seriously hurt patient.
A Stretch of Road With a Troubled Recent History
Wednesday's crash is far from the first serious collision to snarl Point Lookout Road in Leonardtown this year. Just two months earlier, on September 4, crews were dispatched to a two-vehicle wreck at Point Lookout Road and Loveville Road involving an SUV and a commercial vehicle, with the SUV's driver heavily pinned, according to the Mechanicsville Volunteer Fire Department. Firefighters completed that extrication in 34 minutes before Trooper 7 again airlifted the patient to a trauma center, while two additional patients were taken by ground to an area hospital. The fire department reported the roadway was completely shut down for several hours while investigators reconstructed the collision.
A day before that September crash, emergency crews responded to a collision involving a school bus near Point Lookout Road and St. Andrew's Church in Leonardtown. Southern Maryland News Net reported that St. Mary's County Public Schools Bus #203 was involved but carried no children at the time, and that Leonardtown firefighters freed one trapped patient while EMS evaluated two others for injuries.
Back in May, a head-on crash between a car and a truck injured one person and shut down part of Point Lookout Road, with crews requesting a medevac helicopter for an adult female who was reported unresponsive, per thebaynet.com's coverage of that incident. Responders closed the roadway at Potato Hill Farm Lane and urged drivers to avoid the area. And in July 2023, a crash with heavy entrapment near Winters Lane required firefighters to extricate an injured patient within 25 minutes, shutting the road down in both directions near Winters Sheet Metal, thebaynet.com reported at the time.
No further details on the cause of Wednesday's crash, the drivers' identities, or their conditions have been released. It also remains unclear how long lane closures persisted after emergency crews cleared the scene.
