JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman is
hospitalized in serious condition after being injured in a car accident near his home in Mississippi.

The 71-year old was taken to the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, Tennessee, about 90 miles north of the accident scene in the rural Mississippi Delta.

A Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman confirms Freeman and a
passenger were in a wreck shortly before midnight last night in which their car flipped several times. He says ``There's no indication that either alcohol or drugs were involved.''

Clay McFerrin, editor of Sun Sentinel in Charleston, says he
arrived at the accident scene soon after it happened about 4 miles
west of Charleston, not far from where Freeman owns a home with his
wife.

McFerrin says ``they had to use the jaws of life to extract
him.'' He describes Freeman as ``lucid and conscious'' and says
Freeman ``was talking, joking with some of the rescue workers at
one point.''

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)