Responding to a report of a motorcycle accident at 3:43 a.m. April 3, Jefferson Fire and Rescue found a brown 1982 Suzuki motorcycle on its side in the southbound lane of Rt. 215 but couldn’t locate the driver.
“We spent quite some time looking for him,” said Jefferson Fire Chief Walter Morris, the first to arrive. “Never did find him, though.”
Paul Guimond, a truck driver on his way to work, discovered the motorcycle near CCC Camp Road. “I saw the bike in the middle of the road and called 911,” Guimond said. “I felt the engine and it was still warm. I said jeez, I don’t want to find a body.”
Guimond said responders arrived on scene less the two minutes after his last call to Lincoln County Communications Center at 3:49 a.m. “I just want to commend those guys. They were there in no time.”
On first arriving at the scene, firefighters searched the woods on both sides of the road with flashlights. A second search was conducted with thermal imaging cameras, but they still could not locate the driver, Morris said.
A sheriff’s deputy ran the license plate and identified the bike’s owner as Boothbay resident John Stevens, said Lt. Rand Maker with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
Stevens told the LCSO that he had gotten the bike stuck on a dirt road near the Egypt Road in Jefferson on April 2. Stevens said he left the bike there, intending to come back on April 3 to retrieve it, Maker said.
“Apparently someone came and got it unstuck for him, and took it for a ride,” Maker said.
The case is being investigated as a theft, and some evidence was found at the site where Stevens got the bike stuck, Maker said. The LCSO will be following up on the evidence, but no culprit has been identified at this time, Maker said.
Stevens could not be reached for comment.
