Dan Hust | Democrat Crews struggled to winch the wrecked Dodge Ram from the embarkment off of Route 97 just north of the hospital, in Callicoon.

Driver dies after
high-speed crash

Story by Dan Hust
CALLICOON — August 9, 2013 — A 19-year-old Narrowsburg man lost his life early Wednesday morning in a horrific accident along Route 97 just south of Callicoon.
The Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office says Justin Furlow, recently of Lancaster, Pa., was travelling south on 97 at an evidently high rate of speed when a tire apparently slipped off the shoulder.
It’s not known if an animal or other vehicle was involved, but the Sheriff’s Office said Furlow overcorrected, and his 2004 Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck mounted the guardrail and literally flew through the woods for several hundred feet before smashing into a large tree, crumpling the front and back of the truck and stripping the bark off the tree.
Exactly when the accident happened is not certain, but at 1:17 a.m., Sullivan County 911 got a call, reportedly from passersby who noticed the damaged guardrail and saw a single light from Furlow’s truck, now far down an embankment.
Furlow was alive when Callicoon, Hortonville, Lake Huntington and Jeffersonville firefighters arrived.
He was extracted by Jeff’s Jaws of Life and was tended to by both the Upper Delaware Volunteer Ambulance Corps and MobileMedic before a LifeNet helicopter whisked him away to Westchester Medical Center.
Police say, however, that Furlow died en route. An autopsy was scheduled this week, and the investigation continues.
Once daylight arrived, it took two tow trucks to haul the destroyed pickup back up the embankment and onto a flatbed trailer.