ABOUT 3.30pm on Wednesday police were called to a property on Beasley Road near Lucknow when a resident found a man matching the description of the missing driver asleep in a tractor.
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The man, who was reported to be barefoot, wandered away from the property, but was picked up by police a short distance away.
It is believed he spent the night in the tractor.
The man was taken to Orange Police Station and then to Orange Hospital for treatment of a suspected fractured sternum.
Investigators seized several items for forensic examination and released the man pending further inquiries.
He was wanted in relation to a fatal car crash on Tuesday night in which a 75-year-old Millthorpe man, identified as Mirko Barbaric, was killed.
Witnesses at the accident scene on Tuesday night told police the driver, a man in his 30s, seemed confused and dazed after exiting his vehicle, a white utility, which had flipped onto its roof.
He left the scene a few minutes after the accident.
VIDEO: Inspector Dave Harvey addresses the media after Tuesday night's fatality.
Police say the elderly man was heading east on the Mitchell Highway, near Lucknow, when the utility, travelling in the opposite direction, crossed to the wrong side of the road and hit him.
Canobolas Local Area Command Inspector Dave Harvey said the driver of the ute may have known the fate of the other driver before he walked away from the area.
On Tuesday night emergency services spent several hours searching for the man in the area around the crash site and returned to the area yesterday morning to resume the search before PolAir joined them around lunchtime.
Inspector Harvey said police, who knew the man’s identity, had also doorknocked addresses in Orange in an effort to track him down.