Fair Bluff resident
is 24th
fatality
• Single-vehicle crash at 11:10 a.m. Sunday fatal to Fair Bluff town worker Harry Lee Strickland. Death is 24th highway fatality – all rural – of 2006.
By BOB HIGH
Staff Writer
Columbus County’s 24th rural fatality of the year was recorded Sunday when a Town of Fair Bluff worker was killed in a single-vehicle wreck on U.S. 76 just east of the Fair Bluff limits.
Harry Lee Strickland, 72, who lived along Fifth Avenue in the border town, died when his 1998 Mercury slammed sideways into a huge pine tree two-tenths of a mile from Ice Plant Road, reports Highway Patrol Trooper Richard Capps.
Strickland, for an unknown reason, was driving an estimated 85 mph as he approached Fair Bluff from the east and his car went off the road on the right on a curve. Capps said the car came back onto the highway sideways and careened out-of-control off the road on the left.
The car’s passenger side slammed into the tree and wrapped itself around the tree, before bouncing back 18 feet. Capps said the Mercury traveled 502 feet without any brake marks before hitting the tree.
Strickland was not wearing his seat belt and died instantly from injuries sustained when he was thrown around in the front-seat area of the vehicle, according to Columbus County Coroner Linwood Cartrette.
The fatality is the 11th in the county since Sept. 1, and the ninth person to die who was not wearing a seat belt, records show. The number of people killed in Columbus County in 2005 was 17 – 15 in rural areas. (See photo page 4-A of the printed edition)