AUTRYVILLE, NC : Salemburg man killed in wreck on April, Tuesday 11th 2017

A Salemburg man was killed and another man transported to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center in Fayetteville following a grisly wreck Tuesday in which a six-wheel flatbed truck attempted to cross oncoming traffic on N.C. 24 and was hit by a tractor-trailer loaded with lumber.

Elbert John David Edge, 58, of Laurel Lake Road, Salemburg, was pronounced dead at the scene of the collision. He was driving a flatbed truck for Spell Farms. The truck was carrying a 1,000-gallon tank of water and 100-gallon tank of herbicide, neither of which were completely full, said First Sgt. David Kinlaw of the Highway Patrol in Sampson County.

The wreck happened at 3:58 p.m. Tuesday at the intersection of N.C. 24 and Minnie-Hall Road. The road remained closed through the evening and into the night, as traffic was being rerouted so the wreckage, lumber, farm chemicals and other debris could be cleaned up. According to reports from Kinlaw, the 2006 Freightliner tractor-trailer, being driven by Antoine Bostic, 38, of Augusta, Ga., had just left a local lumber mill and was traveling west on N.C. 24 at the time toward its ultimate destination of Alabama.

The flatbed truck was traveling north on Minnie-Hall Road and attempting to cross N.C. 24 as the tractor-trailer loaded down with lumber approached.

“(The flatbed truck) was going straight across N.C. 24 and failed to yield the right of way and was hit on the passenger side,” said Kinlaw.

The impact left the Spell Farms truck mangled and caused a fire in the passenger area that ultimately engulfed the vehicle and claimed the life of Edge. After the collision, the 18-wheeler ran off the right side of the roadway and came to rest in a wooded area off the embankment. The lumber spilled off the side of N.C. 24 as a result of the collision and was still in a pile near the intersection on Wednesday.

Bostic was transported to Cape Fear for what Kinlaw called “non-life-threatening injuries.” Trooper Evelyn Campos investigated the wreck.

Troopers, firefighters and other first responders worked well into the night Tuesday “trying to get all the stuff off the road” following Tuesday’s deadly wreck, Kinlaw noted. The first sergeant said that the intersection has been the site of at least one other major wreck recently, the signs of which could still be seen on the road, along with the fresh damage from Tuesday night’s fatality.

The death was the fourth in as many wrecks on Sampson County roadways this year.

Source :
Salemburg man killed in wreck