TRUMBULL — First Selectman Raymond G. Baldwin Jr. on Thursday was awaiting clearance from doctors to return home after a car accident a day earlier in Shelton.

Baldwin remained hospitalized at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, where he was rushed Wednesday after his town-owned car veered off the road and struck a utility pole.

The first selectman, speaking from his hospital room, said he became momentarily disoriented just before the accident, as if he blacked out.

"This has never happened to me before," Baldwin said of the episode, in which his full-sized sedan wound up between a utility pole and its guy wire.

The car was towed to a garage in Bridgeport.

Baldwin said tests administered at the hospital after the accident show he had not been drinking, nor were there any drugs in his system. He was hooked up to a heart monitor and IV while doctors monitored his medical condition, he said.

The cause of the crash, meanwhile, remains under investigation, Shelton police said Thursday.

Police said the report on the accident, which occurred about 2:15 p.m. Wednesday on Beardsley Road, won't likely be available until Monday, and no charges have been filed.

Naugatuck Valley Bureau Chief Kate Ramunni contributed to this report.

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