UPDATED: Link Webb hospitalized

Link Webb (File photo) [Click to enlarge]

FARMINGTON -- Link Webb, president of the Tennessee Walking Horse Trainers' Association and trainer of current World Grand Champion Santana's El Niņo, was injured in a one-vehicle crash Friday night and remained hospitalized in Nashville on Monday morning.

Lincoln "Link" Eugene Webb, 35, of State Highway 64, proprietor of Webb Stables in Marshall County, was driving home alone after buying tickets to a rodeo for his family, according to his mother-in-law, Elaine Beaty, of Byrdstown.

Webb cracked his left wrist, broke his right shoulder blade, suffered cuts to his face, a bad laceration to the back of his head, a concussion, some swelling of the brain and a punctured lung, Beaty said.

However, she said, "The doctors and the nurses were amazed at his recovery" at Vanderbilt Medical Center, where he was taken by a Marshall County Emergency Medical Service ambulance.

Webb was discharged from the hospital Monday at around 11 a.m., according to the hospital information desk.

During the 2008 Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration, Webb rode Santana's El Niņo to a World Grand Championship. The horse is owned by Michael and Ann Jones of Ringmaster Farms, in Lafayette, Ga.

Calls to Webb's wife were unsuccessful Monday, as her cell phone's mailbox was full and Beaty said the family has received many calls since the crash Friday night.

Tennessee Highway Patrol Trooper David Hill investigated the crash with the assistance of the Marshall County Sheriff's Department, according to THP Sgt. Bob Logan.

Information from the trooper's report and from Tina Hodge, a nearby resident, shows that Webb was driving a gold 2000 Chevy S-10 pickup truck west on Hunter Road at about 10:15 p.m. The truck came to rest about 0.4 miles east of Hunter Road.

The truck went off the right side of the road, striking the face of a guardrail, Logan said. The force of that impact with the guardrail caused the truck to cross the center line into the other lane.

The driver over-corrected, the truck's rear wheels skid sideways and the truck overturned several times before coming to rest in a ditch, Logan said. Exceeding the posted speed limit was noted on Hill's report.

"The crash remains under investigation by the THP," Logan said.

The trooper's report indicated that Webb may have been "ejected through the driver's side window into a field," but Hodge said she believed Webb might have crawled out on his own.

Webb's truck was seen by Hodge's niece, Jennifer Bratcher, who was driving Hodge's daughters home from a skating rink to the Hodge residence on Mt. Lebanon Road, Hodge said Monday. Bratcher saw the truck in the ditch and told her aunt, who drove to the scene with her husband, Bubba, and her sister-in-law, Tawna Eady.

While Tina Hodge cradled Webb's head, Eady called 911 and Bubba Hodge tried to keep Webb still.

"He kept trying to move, but he never opened his eyes," Tina Hodge said.

She estimated the farm field where Webb was that night to be about a mile north of Highway 64.