A 36-year-old New Hampshire man was killed early on Saturday, November 14, when the SUV he was driving struck another vehicle from behind on Interstate 95 in Saco, Maine, and then ran off the highway, according to Maine State Police accounts reported by several news outlets.
Source: The New England Signal
Felix Melo, 36, of Manchester, New Hampshire, died at the scene, Maine State Police spokesperson Aaron Turcotte told the Bangor Daily News. The crash happened at about 4:45 a.m. in the northbound lanes of Interstate 95 — the Maine Turnpike — in Saco, in York County in southern Maine. Early findings indicate Melo's Hyundai Santa Fe hit a Ford Explorer as the Ford travelled in the middle lane, police said, according to the Bangor Daily News and NBC Boston.
The Ford Explorer was driven by Yara Schneider, 42, of Lowell, Massachusetts, the Bangor Daily News reported, with Ana Dos Santos Augusto, 24, also of Lowell, as her passenger, according to local reports of the police account. The Explorer spun and stopped on the roadway after the impact. Emergency personnel treated Schneider and Dos Santos Augusto at the scene and released them there; neither required hospitalisation for serious injuries in the reports available on Saturday.
What state police say happened
A Maine State Police crash reconstruction team helped investigate alongside Troop G, the troop responsible for the Turnpike. One northbound lane was closed while investigators worked and later reopened, according to local reports. Investigators have not identified a cause of the crash, and police said they would release more details later, according to WMTW.
Source: LiveLink News
Maine State Police have not identified why the Hyundai struck the Explorer from behind. Speed, impairment, fatigue and distraction have NOT been named as factors in this crash in any police account published on Saturday — the reconstruction team's work is what will establish the sequence.
That restraint matters for readers of early crash reports: a rear-end impact on a dark, pre-dawn interstate can have several explanations, and state police have attributed none of them to Melo or to Schneider. What is established is the time, the place, the two vehicles, the direction of travel and the outcome — one driver dead at the scene and two people treated and released.
Background: I-95 and the Maine Turnpike
Interstate 95 is the United States East Coast's main north-south interstate, running from Florida to the Canadian border in Maine, and one of the country's heaviest long-haul trucking corridors — a route many Punjabi truckers drive on East Coast runs. Its Maine section is operated as the Maine Turnpike. Saco sits in York County between Portland and the New Hampshire line, and the stretch through Saco carries a mix of local, tourist and freight traffic at all hours.
A 4:45 a.m. Saturday crash also falls in the hardest driving window of the week: full darkness, the end of the overnight freight cycle and the start of early weekend travel. Police have not linked any of those conditions to this specific crash — they are the context in which the reconstruction team is working, not a finding — but they are why a single closed lane and a reconstruction response can hold up an interstate even when traffic is light.
What happens next
The reconstruction team's findings will determine whether state police publish a fuller account of the sequence and whether any charges or citations follow. As of Saturday's reports, police had announced no charges and said additional information would be released as it becomes available. Awaaz Punjab will update this story when Maine State Police release further details.