LEXINGTON, S.C. — A West Columbia police officer has been released from the hospital following a crash with that involved another vehicle near the town limits of Lexington.
The collision took place around 12:40 p.m. Thursday in the 5400 block of Augusta Road.
West Columbia Police confirmed Friday the officer was transporting a detainee to the Lexington County Detention Center on Gibson Road in Lexington. The detainee suffered minor injuries.
The driver of the other vehicle was not hurt.
An incident report from the West Columbia Police Department said the driver of the other vehicle failed to yield the right of way when turning out of the parking lot. The South Carolina Highway Patrol said that the West Columbia Police Department vehicle was not the at fault party in the crash.
The report said the officer's vehicle suffered severe front end damage and the airbags deployed.
This all a scary sight for employees along Highway 1 Thursday afternoon.
"That's when I look up and I see the cop car hit him like right in the front and bad damage," witness Jacob Adams said.
Adams works at Lena's Bakery, which is right across the street from where the crash happened. He said he's never seen something like this while at work, but he's almost been a victim of a collision himself while taking out the trash behind the building.
"I've seen people act crazy on these roads. I almost got hit right over there," Adams said.
He said he saw what looked like a detainee in handcuffs in the back of the West Columbia police car.
"It looked like somebody was getting arrested or something, like on their way to a police department or something like that and they brought out two stretchers," Adams said.
Another witness, Jigar Patel, works at the Zoom BP gas station, also across the street from where the collision happened.
"I was with a customer and one of my regular customers came and told me, see outside? There is an accident that happened and I see outside from my window, so that was a cop car and another white small car hit by a police car that I saw," Patel said.
He added he's also never seen a crash outside the window of where he works.