By Connor Lynch
MIDDLESEX CENTRE — Three farmers were involved in three separate farm-related highway accidents in Western Ontario last month.
A farmer was killed when his pickup truck rolled off a road and another farmer was injured in a three-car pileup.
In a third accident, one farmer was shaken up after his tractor was rear-ended by a car. The driver of the car was killed.
Middlesex Centre farmer Jason Derks was killed when his pickup truck rolled over Nov. 10. He was driving west on Eight Mile Road just north of London when his vehicle left the road and struck the south ditch.
On Nov. 1, 48-year-old Russell John Hierons, of Bosanquet Township, was killed after dark when the car he was driving slammed into the back of a farm tractor heading north on Forest Road near Plympton Township, east of Sarnia, in Lambton County just before 6:50 p.m. Hierons was taken to hospital with serious injuries and was later pronounced dead. Lambton County OPP did not release the name of the farmer. No one was charged.
After dark on Nov. 22, a Huron County farmer was involved in a three-vehicle collision. He was pulling two gravity bins behind his tractor while he was driving up Hwy 21, just north of Prince Albert. A vehicle approached from behind and tried to pass. Halfway through the pass, the driver of the car realized there was a car coming the opposite way. He tried to merge with the tractor, bounced off the tractor tire, and was struck by the car coming the other way. Nobody was killed, though the two car drivers and one of their passengers were injured. The farmer was not hurt. The driver of the car who tried to pass will be charged with careless driving when he’s out of the hospital, said Const. Jamie Stanley of Huron County OPP.
