Closeup of damage to the boat that crashed into a tree on the banks of the Merrimack River near the Rourke Bridge on Sunday afternoon. SUN/Robert Mills
By Robert Mills, rmills@lowellsun.com
Updated: AUGUST 31, 2015
LOWELL, MASS.
A 48-year-old Lowell man and his 3-year-old son were rescued from the banks of the Merrimack River by fellow boaters after the man reportedly lost steering in his boat and struck a tree on the bank of the river Sunday.
Emergency crews were called to the river about 5:30 p.m., for a report that a boat had crashed in the area of the Rourke Bridge.
Firefighters put a rescue boat in the water, but the man and his son were already being brought back to shore by Jim and Lisa Payne of Westford.
Ivan Silva, a friend of the man driving the crashed boat, declined to identify the driver but said he is a 48-year-old Lowell man who was with his 3-year-old son.
Silva said the group of friends was hanging out at a beach upriver and that the man had gone downriver to give another a friend a ride home. Silva said his friend told him he lost steering in the boat as he was heading back.
Silva said his friend suffered a badly broken nose but was otherwise OK, and that his son was unhurt.
The Paynes initially declined to comment when contacted at the Rourke Brothers' Boat Ramp in Lowell, where they brought the injured man and his son.
The father was bleeding from the face as he was loaded into a Trinity EMS ambulance that took both him and his son to Lowell General Hospital from the boat ramp.
Read more: http://www.lowellsun.com/breakingnews/ci_28730181/man-injured-when-boat-crashes-merrimack-river-lowell#ixzz3kQZSP5B4