NJ Governor Jon Corzine was in a pretty bad car accident this evening. Some reports are that he’s in critical but stable condition; several broken bones including a bunch of ribs; still in surgery.
Read the latest at Blue Jersey.
Our thoughts and best wishes to Gov. Corzine for a speedy recovery.
UPDATE: Boy, this was a really nasty accident. The latest, from this morning’s Star-Ledger:
Gov. Jon Corzine remains in intensive care this morning with a breathing tube in his throat and a doctor declaring him lucky to be alive.
The 60-year-old governor underwent about two hours of surgery last night to repair multiple broken bones, including 12 ribs and a femur that protruded through the skin of his thigh, following a car accident on the Garden State Parkway in Galloway Township.
At 7:30 this morning, Lori Shaffer, a spokeswoman for Cooper University Hospital in Camden, said the governor was in critical but stable condition and remained in the trauma ICU unit….
He required seven pints of blood, officials said, and is using a breathing tube to ease his respiration with the broken ribs, and a broken breastbone.
The governor also suffered a broken collarbone and lower back bone and a flap-like cut on his skull, which a plastic surgeon stitched back together.
Corzine spokesman Anthony Coley said the governor did not appear to have suffered brain or spinal cord damage.
Robert Ostrum, chief of orthopedic trauma surgery at the hospital, said the governor will need more surgeries, probably tomorrow and Monday, because of the femur fracture that pushed the bone through the skin of his leg.
The driver of the pickup truck that caused the accident fled the scene, and the police are looking for him or her.
FURTHER UPDATE: The Star-Ledger is reporting that Corzine wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and as a result was thrown from the front seat to the back seat during the accident. Also,
One hospital source also said Corzine is in worse condition than has been publicly acknowledged, and that he could be in a wheelchair for six months…. At the press conference, Steven Ross, head of the trauma unit at Cooper, said Corzine is unable to speak. “He has a tube in his throat,” Ross said. “He can not talk, but he’s able to answer simple yes and no questions about whether he’s having pain and (things) like that.” “Based on pictures I’ve seen (of) the crash, I think he was lucky.”
If anyone still needed to be convinced that you should wear your seatbelt …
on top of it, he was on his way to host the meeting between the rutgers team and imus!
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i wish gov corzine a full and speedy recovery.
That’s terrible news. I hope he pulls through for a quick, full recovery.
…Are you having server problems? It is taking so long to download pages that it almost isn’t worth the effort to cache them and post responses.
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Please respond here, not via email.
It’s not in our control, unfortunately. Take it up with the powers that be.
…it did seem somewhat odd that, all of a sudden the pages started downloading very slowly.
Is it so difficult for the driver to say, “Governor, we are not going anywhere until your seatbelt is fastened.” It’s the law in both NJ and MA.
The driver and the aid just received a few bumps and bruises, Corzine survived just by the grace of god.
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BTW—a compund fracture of the femur is very much life threatening re a “fatty embolist”. Fatty tissue leaves the injury site via the arteries travels to the heart, builds up and results in death.
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The governor is going to be in excruciating pain and discomfort, possibilities of clotting for a while, and will likely have an altered gait for the remainder of his life.
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I will make the wild and unfounded guess that he failed to use his seat belt. He’s a very lucky man that he is alive and not a para or quad.
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Hope he does well and bounces back.
NJ officials may cite him, according to a report I just saw on MSNBC.
It seems his comment has basis in fact. Just because you may not like a comment doesn’t mean it is worthless or trollish.
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While I don’t personally believe in mandatory seat belt legislation, I think you are an idiot for not wearing one. This unfortunate incident could be used to teach that point.
Don’t blame the zeromonkies. They get a little hyper as the weather warms.
…when I was a youngen in Ohio in the 1960s, I was the driver, and my mother was the passenger. I told her that the car wouldn’t start until she fastened her seatbelt. She looked at me questioningly, and then she understood what I meant: I would not start the car until she fastened her seatbelt. And she did so ever since, when I was driving. It’s a good thing that she did so, because one time I had to jam on the breaks. If she didn’t have her seatbelt on, she might have had an unfortunate meeting with the windshield.
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Quite frankly, whether or not it’s the law to have your seatbelt fastened, it is the courteous thing to do. I suspect that the driver now feels horrible because of the accident that put Corzine in such dire straits, whether or not the driver was responsible for the accident. It would have been the courteous thing for Corzine to have fastened his seat belt.
never mind
Car crashes, broken limbs, gay sex scandals.
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It makes me miss the days when they just took bribes.
I am glad to hear the governor will be OK.
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Think of it…the injuries were preferable over a meeting with the old Windbag Imus and Whinebag Rutgers coach….
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Let’s move on. Sharpton & Jackson take Imus out of the picture.
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It reminds mo of the old saying ” ..and how was the play Mrs. Lincoln”