Windham police are still searching for the driver of a large red SUV who rearended a 22- year-old Windham Marine who just returned from two years of active duty in Iraq. He’d just returned home for good five days prior to the accident, having sustained no injuries while there.

Mike Tierney, of 4 Blueberry Road, was driving to a friend’s house at around 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 10, when someone hit him from behind as he waited to take a left onto Marblehead Road from Route 111A.

“I heard brakes lock up behind me,” said Tierney, adding he had no time to react to the sound. “It just happened so fast.”

Tierney said he was wearing a helmet at the time. He doesn’t remember whether he was thrown from his Honda CRV street bike or not.

Tierney suffered a broken leg and will be in a splint for a couple of months.

Tierney and a witness described the vehicle as a red or maroon SUV, about as large as a Ford Bronco, but no leads have developed.

The witness who saw the accident attempted to chase the hit-and-run driver, said Windham Police Chief Gerald Lewis, but it was traveling too fast to tail.

“At this point, it’s just speculation. We know that he hit him and fled,” said Lewis.

Neither Tierney nor the witness who chased the fleeing SUV saw the driver clearly enough to describe him or her, and neither was able to get a license plate number, Lewis said.

Dennis Tierney, Mike’s father, said police showed his son a photo depicting the type of vehicle they thought might have been used by the driver, which Mike Tierney identified. However, the witness who chased the car said the one in the photo was not the car he saw hit Tierney and subsequently chased.

“I’d say the witness had a better view,” said Tierney.

Tierney said he was stationed in the cities of Fallujah and Balad in Iraq, serving in the infantry unit for 22 months before returning home earlier this month.

Tierney said he’d ask the person who hit him why he would take his freedom away after Tierney had fought for the country’s freedom.

“What I want to say I can’t say on television or in the paper,” Tierney said.

Anyone with information on the accident is asked to call the Windham Police Department at 434-5577.