China Grove Woman Dies On Rain-Slickened Road

BY JOHN PATTERSON
SALISBURY POST

CHINA GROVE - A 75-year-old China Grove woman, on the way home from visiting her mother, died Tuesday evening in a wreck on an exit road off Interstate 85.

The car in which she was a passenger ran off the U.S. 29 exit road going south and struck a tree.

Margaret Carter and her husband, Curtis, were returning from a visit with Margaret Carter's 93-year-old mother at Genesis Elder Care in Salisbury, according to the couple's daughter, Donna Fowler.

Curtis Carter, 69, was driving the couple's 1985 Honda Prelude through heavy rain when he took the China Grove exit just after 6 p.m.

Less than 200 yards onto the exit, Curtis Carter lost control of the vehicle. According to N.C. Highway Patrol trooper J.S. Wooten, the vehicle's left wheels "dipped off the road before he (Curtis Carter) lost control."

The vehicle dropped down an embankment and ran into a tree. The Carters were both wearing their seat belts, Wooten said.

Curtis Carter was treated and released from Rowan Regional Medical Center. Fowler said he suffered a cut on his nose, another over his eye and some bruising to his chest and ankle.

The area where Tuesday's accident occurred is "very confusing for drivers," Fowler said this morning. Highway officials have placed portable concrete barriers in a line along the right side of the exit, which "makes it hard for drivers to get their bearing," she said.

Wooten said Curtis Carter was traveling within the posted 55 mile-per-hour speed limit.

In addition to Fowler, Margaret Carter had two sons. She was retired from First Union National Bank in Kannapolis, Fowler said.

"Her (Margaret Carter's) mother had been in the nursing home since September of 1995," Fowler said. "She (Carter) would go up there six days a week ... She'd spend hours with her every day."