Gate impales driver through chest

A lorry driver is undergoing emergency surgery after crashing into gates and being impaled in the chest.

The 37-year-old was delivering timber to a building site in Dodsworth Street in Darlington, in County Durham, on Tuesday when he lost control.

Police said one of the gate's metal poles smashed through the windscreen, went through the driver's chest and out of the back window.

It took firefighters an hour to free him and he was airlifted to hospital.

'Conscious throughout'

Colin Bage, of County Durham and Darlington Fire Service, said: "We were faced with a flatbed truck and it had a long round metal pole, probably three or four inches in diameter, which had entered the cab through the windscreen, impaled the driver, and then exited through the rear of the cab itself.

"So the driver was stuck in the cab with this pole through him.

"He remained conscious throughout the whole extraction process. We cut the pole down to, probably within one foot of the casualty, both front and back, using hydraulic cutting equipment.

"He was transported by air ambulance, sat in an upright position, with the pole still through his chest."

The victim is being treated in Middlesbrough's James Cook University Hospital and his condition is not known.