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Tuesday, January 07, 2003

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

ALTOONA -- One moment, 44-year-old John Nolan was lying alone in the dark on a well-traveled road, drunk and smoking a cigarette, investigators think.

Seconds later, he was thrown into the middle of the three-lane highway, his legs snapped by a pickup truck whose driver then stopped 50 yards up the road, checked his vehicle and drove on.

Moments after that, Nolan was run over and killed by a van whose bewildered driver saw would-be rescuers standing on the roadway and veered to avoid them, hitting Nolan instead.

Last night, 24 hours after the accident, suburban Logan Township police were hunting the first driver, a white man with glasses, a crewcut and a full-size red-and-silver pickup truck. They had not publicly identified or charged the van driver, who probably couldn't see the darkly clad Nolan lying on the sparsely lit stretch of road, Blair County Coroner Patricia Ross said last night.

And they were debating whether the truck driver even knew that he ran someone over, Ross said.

Nolan "was conscious after the truck hit him," said Larry Wilkes Jr., who rushed from his job at the nearby BestWay Pizza Shop as passersby stopped to help. "He was saying he just wanted to go home. ... Then, a few moments later, the van hit him."

Ross said she did not have toxicology test results yet but that relatives said Nolan was drunk when he left a family member's house to walk home, the equivalent of three city blocks along Business Route 220.

"People said he was staggering along the road," Wilkes said.

One passing motorist saw Nolan, stretched out on the pavement, smoking, Ross said.

That sight caused at least two drivers to stop, then hurry with their passengers to get Nolan off the road -- only to have the pickup truck hit him first, leaving him bleeding severely from compound fractures of the legs.

"Then ... maybe not even a minute later, the van driver comes and there are men in dark clothing on the road, trying to flag the van," Ross said. "And the van driver says, 'What are they doing? Playing chicken?' And he turns and hits [Nolan]."

Nolan died instantly of chest injuries after the van hit him, Ross said.