UPDATE: Hopkinton Woman, Daughter Both OK

UPDATE: People who identified the car of a woman and her daughter who were hit head-on on Rte. 135 Monday said both mom and daughter have been released from the hospital and are doing OK.  

One man was taken by Lifeflight helicopter to an advanced trauma center in Boston and a Hopkinton woman and her daughter were sped to UMass Medical Center in Worcester after a serious accident Monday afternoon.

The rescues followed a head-on crash just over the Hopkinton line in Ashland on West Union Street (Rte. 135) around 2:30 p.m.

Lt. Richard Briggs said Ashland Police are investigating what caused a 54-year-old Longmeadow man to lose control of his late-model Ford F-150 pickup truck, cross the double-yellow line and strike an oncoming westbound car.

The man struck a gray, late-model Toyota 4Runner headed west, driven by  a 39-year-old Hopkinton woman whose daughter was in a car seat in the back seat.

None of the crash victims' names are being released.

Both cars were pinned against the guard rail in the eastbound lane, just to the east of TJ's Spirits' parking lot, with metal from the vehicles' engine areas pushed back to the passenger compartments.

The Toyota's wheels hung detached from the vehicle's axles.

Both drivers were trapped in their vehicles until freed by Hopkinton and Ashland firefighters using a hydraulic, jaws-of-life cutting tool to strip away the drivers' doors, witnesses said.

"The fact that all three victims were wearing seat belts undoubtedly saved three lives today," Briggs said.

The man, according to witnesses at the scene, had a severe gash on one arm, "right down to the elbow. You could see the bone," said Peter Walker, who lives nearby in Ashland.

The injured man was taken to a Boston-area hospital by a medical helicopter that landed in the nearby parking lot of the First Congregational Church of Hopkinton, Briggs said.

Jeremy Brett, another neighbor who lives nearby and heard but didn't see the crash, said he heard rescue personnel discussing that the male driver had prior heart problems and diabetes, and had also received severe internal injuries from the crash.

Lt. Briggs said Ashland Police have no firsthand knowledge of the man's previous medical conditions or if any previous conditions affected his driving.

Briggs said the man was conscious when emergency personnel removed him from his vehicle and loaded him onto the helicopter.

The woman, whom witnesses said was also conscious but appeared to have head trauma, was taken in a separate ambulance from her daughter, who was visibly bumped and bruised, to UMass Hospital in Worcester, Briggs said.

Briggs said the woman was taken by Hopkinton ambulance and the girl by Ashland ambulance.

Lt. Briggs said he would classify the injuries of all three people as serious. "You saw the vehicles," he said to a photographer who was at the scene.

Both cars' airbags were deployed, and dozens of golf balls littered the floor of the F-150 and the road where the accident was.