Governor Says He Doesn’t ‘Have A Clue’ About Accident

In his first words about the cause of his near-fatal car crash, Gov. Kirk Fordice told his wife Thursday: “I don’t have a clue.”

Meanwhile, his aides explained that the reason he was driving alone, miles behind his police escort, was that he had asked for some privacy.

Fordice’s Jeep ran off a rural stretch of an interstate highway and caught fire Tuesday evening.

“Every governor across this country deserves personal, private time,” said state Public Safety Commissioner Jim Ingram, who retracted his initial statement that the troopers were “near the governor at all times.”

Ingram said the governor has the right to refuse the police escort and had asked the troopers to use a separate car while he was returning home from his native Memphis, Tenn.

“The governor has the discretion of saying he wants to attend functions by himself, and that happens,” Ingram said. “When he wants to drive, let me tell you there are days - and it happens every now and then - he wants to get out and be by himself and drive and drive and drive.”

Fordice’s Jeep ran off Interstate 55 in northern Mississippi, rolled down an embankment and caught fire, trapping him inside. Other motorists pulled him out.

Ingram said the governor’s officers - who were three miles ahead of him - did not know of the accident until they were notified by radio.

The 62-year-old governor suffered numerous injuries, including broken ribs, possibly broken vertebrae and bruises to his heart and lungs. Doctors said he is in stable condition in intensive care - upgraded from serious - and his breathing tubes had been removed for the first time since the wreck.

Fordice’s wife, Pat, who was in France on a state trip at the time of the crash, visited her husband Thursday when the tubes were removed.

“My first question was: ‘What happened?”’ she said. “He said, ‘I don’t have a clue.’ He doesn’t know what happened.”

The cause of the crash is under investigation. It occurred in clear, dry weather around dusk. The hospital said there is no evidence Fordice had been drinking, and doctors said they do not believe he suffered a heart attack before the wreck.