Robert Channing Sanderson, 20 – not wearing his seat belt -- killed on Red Hill Road when his car strikes ditch and driveway culvert and overturns.

By BOB HIGH

Another single-vehicle wreck claimed the life early Sunday of the 15th person to die on Columbus County’s rural roads this year.

Robert Channing Sanderson, 20, of Old Boardman Road, Evergreen, died at the scene of the 2:47 a.m. crash on Red Hill Road, just a mile north of the U.S. 74-76 overpass. (See photo Page 4-A of the printed edition)

Highway Patrol Trooper Bryan Thompson said Sanderson was driving north at an estimated 65 mph when for some unknown reason he drove to the left and struck a driveway ditch at 60 mph, and then hit a driveway culvert.

The impact flipped the 1998 Pontiac one and half times and it landed upside down against a power pole support wire. There were tire marks of 44 feet from the road to the point of impact, but Sanderson did not apply his brakes, Thompson noted.

Sanderson, not wearing his seat belt, was thrown about in the car as it crashed and flipped and died of neck and head injuries, according to Columbus County Coroner Linwood Cartrette.

The Pontiac traveled 124 feet after the initial impact and came to rest in the front yard of the Dale Sellers residence. The vehicle was registered to Sanderson’s mother with an address of Garysburg, a small community east of Roanoke Rapids.

Sanderson’s death marks the 12th single-vehicle driver to die in crashes this year. One death was when a pedestrian was lying in the road and run over by a car, and another death was a woman on a three-wheel bicycle who was struck by a pickup truck.

The fatality is the fifth in the past 28 days. This year’s total of 15 compares to 17 fatalities in 2005, but is far below the 36 fatalities registered in 2004. (See Obituary Page)