Route 12 Accident Is Fatal
By Sandy Vondrasek

A 44-year-old West Brookfield man died last Thursday night, six hours after he was critically injured in a head-on collision on Route 12, near its junction with Peth Road, north of Randolph.

Both Curtis R. Salls, and the driver of the other vehicle, Jessica Homa, 30, of Brookfield, had to be extricated from their vehicles, and both were airlifted to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center with head, neck, and leg injuries, state police reported.

Homa remained this week at DHMC in fair condition, a hospital spokesperson said yesterday.

Police said Homa was northbound in her 1994 Chevrolet Blazer on Route 12, at 3:15 p.m., and Salls was heading south in his 2006 Pontiac, when Homa apparently swerved into the southbound lane and struck Salls’ car head-on.

White River Valley Ambulance, Randolph Village firefighters, and Randolph police also responded and assisted with extrication, traffic control, and clearing a landing area for two helicopters, one from DHMC and the other from Albany, N.Y.

At about 9 p.m., Salls died of injuries he suffered in the accident. Police said this week that the accident remains under investigation.

A native of the Johnson area who had moved to this area in the last year, Salls had worked for the last two months as the mechanic at the Randolph town garage, repairing town trucks and school district buses.

According to Wes Gibbs, bus transportation coordinator for the district, Salls was "an overall nice guy" and a competent and hardworking mechanic, who quickly made friends with his supervisors and co-workers at the town garage.

"We got to know him fairly well in the two months," Gibbs added. "He did not drink and he did not smoke, but he liked his food and his chocolate—in those two months, we noticed those things."

Salls "put a pretty positive spin on everyday life," and when he encountered any kind of negiativity, "he would twist it around and make you think about things," Gibbs noted.

Salls had moved to the area in order to be with his fiancé, Shelly Blakeney, and her two children, Gibbs said.

"He had shared with me that this was the first serious relationship in his life," Gibbs, said.

Salls, who had never been married, was "doing the family thing" for the first time in his life, and loving it.

"He took a real active interest in Blake’s (Shelly’s son) athletic endeavors as a wrestler," Gibbs noted.

Prior to taking the Randolph job, Salls had worked as a night-shift mechanic for UPS at its garage in Williston, The switch meant a pay cut, but it also meant a smaller commute and more time with his new family. Gibbs said Salls was an experienced mechanic who "could get into any challenge, and if he needed help, he had the connections to call people and find out what he needed."

Before he started here, Randolph’s highway department and the district bus department had been without a mechanic for a few months. After two months on the job, Salls had finished taking care of the backlog of repairs.

"We were in the process of figuring out what we wanted to repair, instead of what needed to be repaired," Gibbs said. "When it happened, it took us all by shock."

Randolph’s public works director, John Rotter, who hired Salls, said this week that he and others were talking about the irony of Salls being killed in an accident.

Rotter noted that the safety-conscious Salls, who did some snow plowing for the department, had recently asked Rotter to get new snow tires for the truck he drove.

"We had just gotten new snows on that truck," Rotter said.

An obituary and picture of Salls appear in the B-section of this week’s Herald.