Two U.S. Army soldiers and a German woman were injured on Saturday near the base here when the car driven by one of the soldiers crashed into the woman’s car, police said.
Two soldiers, who are stationed in Grafenwoehr, were both driving at high speed in their BMWs on the B2 between the towns Pegnitz and Bronn when one driver lost control of his vehicle, Pegnitz police said. He collided head-on with the car of a 50-year-old German woman.
The American driver, 30 years old, and a passenger in the BMW were hospitalized, as was the German woman, police said. The passenger, also a soldier, was later released, but the woman and the driver, who sustained serious injuries, remain in the hospital.
The second car ran off the road and into a meadow. The driver of that vehicle, age 27, then drove through the meadow in an apparent attempt to flee the scene. He was stopped at the Grafenwoehr base gate by the military police and was then arrested by German police, said Roman Markert, the Pegnitz deputy police chief.
A witness told police that the two soldiers seemed to have been racing each other. Nordbayerischer Kurier, a local newspaper, reported that the BMW that crashed caught fire.
Army spokesman Nathan Van Schaik said Army leaders were taking the latest accident involving servicemembers very seriously and plan to add joint checkpoints with local and military police on and off the installation.
Earlier this month two other accidents happened off post. In the first incident, a soldier whose vehicle had no license plates crashed into a tree on base in Grafenwoehr when he fled from MPs. In the second, a soldier was involved in a head-on collision near Hohenfels. That crash is being investigated.
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