A Greeneville teen-ager escaped serious injury when the car he was driving went off Baileyton Road near Kidwell School Road about 12:50 p.m. Thursday, struck a guardrail and plunged down an embankment.

Deputy Sheriff Robert Livingston said the single-car accident took place when Jeffrey O'Neil, 16, of West Summer Street, Greeneville, lost control of the 1995 Pontiac Grand Prix he was driving north on Baileyton Road (Tennessee Highway 172).

The car went off the right side of the road near 2992 Baileyton Road, traveled down a ditch, struck and went over a guardrail and plunged down a steep embankment into a wooded area, Deputy Livingston said.

Baileyton Road was blocked for about two hours as investigation of the accident was conducted and the heavily damaged car was pulled up the embankment and moved from the scene.

O'Neil was trapped in the wreckage of the heavily damaged car until volunteers with the Greeneville Emergency & Rescue Squad cut the top from the vehicle, Livingston said.

Kevin Ayers, a Rescue Squad member who took part in the effort to free O'Neil, said three Squad members stabilized the car, which was resting on its passenger side at the base of a steep, 15-foot embankment, by chaining it to a pair trees.

Subsequently, he said, Rescue Squad members used power tools to cut the top from the car. That, he said, was more difficult than usual because of the position in which the car had come to rest.

Ayers noted that a Tusculum Volunteer Fire Department firefighter was joined by several bystanders in carrying the injured youth up the steep, rock-strewn embankment after he was freed from the wreckage.

Among those assisting was Tennessee Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Powell, of Kingsport, who stopped at the scene to help emergency personnel.

After treatment at the scene by Greene County-Greeneville Emergency Medical Services (EMS) personnel and crew members from the WellmontOne medical evacuation helicopter that was dispatched to the scene, O'Neil was flown from a landing zone near the accident scene to the Johnson City Medical Center.

About 4:30 p.m. Thursday, a nursing supervisor at the JCMC said O'Neil had been discharged from the hospital after treatment in the emergency room.