By BOB HIGH

Two violent deaths marked the past four days in Columbus County, with a Hispanic woman dying in a single-vehicle crash near Tabor City Saturday, and a possible homicide being discovered at 11:30 p.m. Thursday in a vehicle fire along Whitehall Road. (See photos Page 4-A of the printed edition.)

Rosalba Dioisio Lopez, 30, of Miller Road, Tabor City, died along N.C. 904 at 9:50 a.m. Saturday when her station wagon went off the road and overturned in the edge of a swamp. The crash was 7.2 miles southeast of Tabor City.

Highway Patrol Trooper Brian Ezzell said Lopez was alone as she drove southeast at 55 mph and went off the road to the right, veered back to the centerline, then went off the highway to the right and hit the bottom of the shoulder at 30 mph.

Lopez was partially thrown out of the passenger side of the vehicle as it overturned and it pinned her in shallow water. Her head was under water, and Columbus County Coroner Linwood Cartrette said it’s possible the woman drowned.

Sheriff’s Detective Capt. Bobby Benton said firefighters and Highway Patrol Trooper Daniel Hilburn discovered a body Thursday night while dousing the blaze that consumed a 1999 Jeep.

The Jeep was parked 50 feet off the road -- near the Ann Spaulding Road intersection north of Hallsboro -- in the entrance to a logging area, and was found on fire by a passerby shortly after 11 p.m. The fire destroyed the vehicle and the body was burned beyond recognition.

“We’ll have to wait until we get a report from the State Medical Examiner’s office to find out if the body is male or female, and a possible cause of death,” Benton said.

Foul play is suspected by detectives, who found the vehicle is registered to a Hoke County address and had been purchased in Wilmington. Benton declined to give further details.

“We don’t know if the person in the Jeep was killed in some other location or not. And, we don’t know if the person driving the Jeep was just trying to get rid of the body and drove to Columbus County from another location,” Benton noted.

An arson investigator from the State Bureau of Investigation, SBI Agent Mac Warner, and detectives making up the sheriff’s crime scene unit responded to the site and combed the scene until daylight Friday.

The vehicle was impounded at the Sheriff’s Office.

This is the third rural homicide this year, and the fourth of 2006 including a Fair Bluff shooting death in June. Arrests were made in the first two rural deaths, and no charges were filed in the Fair Bluff case.

The highway death is the 12th of the year – and the second last week -- in this county, all of the victims dying in crashes involving just one motor vehicle. A woman on a pedicycle and a man lying in the road were struck by vehicles, and the other 10 victims were occupants of vehicles that wrecked.