By Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
BOSTIAN HEIGHTS ó A single-car accident closed Old Beatty Ford Road for about two hours Saturday evening and apparently resulted in a fatality.
The accident about 7:15 p.m. in the 6900 block of Old Beatty Ford Road was a little more than a mile east of the intersection with Old Concord Road.
Robert Ashby said he was eating supper when he heard a commotion on the road in front of his house.
“The vehicle stopped over there,” Ashby said, pointing to a site where a car had plowed into his chain-link fence.
Then Ashby pointed to a spot several feet west of the accident site.
“He stopped over here,” Ashby said, referring to the man who was thrown from the car.
A trooper from the N.C. Highway Patrol said the accident was still under investigation late Saturday and said the man who was thrown from the car was alive when he was taken by ambulance to Carolinas Medical Center-NorthEast.
But Ashby said the man who was ejected from the car didn’t make it, and said a life-flight helicopter that had been called to transport him was canceled because he had already died. A Bostian Heights firefighter confirmed that the helicopter was canceled, but said he didn’t know for sure if the man was dead.
Ashby said the small red car in which the man was riding was traveling west on Old Beatty Ford Road and overturned at least three times before hitting the fence. The man thrown from the car ended up against the fence.
Ashby said three other occupants of the car ó a woman and two children ó were wearing seat belts and weren’t thrown from the car. Their injuries appeared relatively minor, Ashby said.
The irony of the evening wreck, several neighbors said, was that another serious accident happened less than 100 yards west of the scene earlier in the day. There were a number of skid marks at the scene of that accident.
Ashby said two cars collided head-on in that accident and three ambulances were required to transport the injured.
No report of that accident available Saturday night.
Ashby said traffic along the road is a constant headache for those who live in the area.
“I’ve been trying for 20 years to get ’em to cut the speed limit and enforce it,” Ashby said. “It’s 55 (mph) and it ought to be 35 (mph).”