ATLANTA (AP) — Former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young was taken to a hospital Monday afternoon as a precaution after a cement truck overturned on a car he was riding in, authorities said.
Young, 83, was first treated at roadside by emergency crews after Monday’s accident, Atlanta police spokesman Sgt. Greg Lyon said. Young was in one of two vehicles the truck fell on and he had some minor injuries, Lyon said.
Young, who wasn’t driving, was able to walk away from the accident in the city where he had served as a mayor in the 1980s, according to Kelly Jackson, a spokeswoman with the Andrew J. Young Foundation, Inc.
“After being treated at the scene, he went to the hospital as a precaution,” she added in an emailed statement, noting Young’s wife Carolyn was at his side at the hospital hours afterward Monday night.
“He is doing well and is in good spirits,” Jackson wrote, adding he appreciated calls he had received from well-wishers.
A second man was hospitalized with head and hand injuries after being pulled from a crushed car, authorities said. Video shot by a bystander showed people near the scene helping pull the bloodied man from a mangled car and carry him to a nearby sidewalk. It wasn’t immediately clear what car that man was riding in.
Lyon says the truck driver was cited for disobeying a traffic control device and driving too fast for conditions. The truck spilled diesel fuel at the scene and the driver’s identity wasn’t immediately released.
Young had worked closely with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights movement decades ago and became the first black Georgian elected to the U.S. House in 1972. He was appointed to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by then-President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
He was elected Atlanta mayor in 1981 and again in 1985, according to his foundation.
