A man from North Carolina, USA, died when the GPS in his car drove him to a bridge that was shaken by a flood in 2013. Part of the passage had collapsed into the river, creating a hole with more than one person. 6 meters in diameter.
On the night of his eldest daughter’s birthday party, 47-year-old father of two Phillip Paxson was driving his jeep through Hickory County when his GPS took him to the doomed bridge.
“It was a dark, rainy night and she was tracking her GPS, which took her from the road to a bridge flowing into a river,” the victim’s mother-in-law, Linda McPhee Koenig, said in a Facebook post on Tuesday. .
“The bridge collapsed nine years ago and has never been repaired. There were no barriers or warning signs to prevent the death of a 47-year-old father of two children. His family and friends will miss him terribly. He will miss him terribly. It was a completely preventable accident… We mourn his death. “
Now, Paxson’s family is trying to draw attention to the tragedy that they believe could have been avoided with simple proper maintenance or even with signs and obstacles warning drivers not to drive onto the bridge.
“It was an avoidable accident, there was a big hole in the bridge he was trying to cross at night, and there were no obstructions or warnings,” family members write on a GoFundMe page titled “Paxson family.” “It’s been like this for years. No one wanted to take responsibility for fixing it and now he has to pay the price. Please pray for our family at this very difficult time.”
North Carolina State Highway Patrol officials found the vehicle and the driver’s body after responding to calls about a vehicle overturned in a creek near 24th Street Place Northeast, a private road in Catawba County, WCNC TV reported.
A family member wrote on a sign at the crash site, “He didn’t fall off the bridge. He didn’t jump off the bridge.” Local residents erected a makeshift monument there. Another poster reads, “Draged himself to death in the 20-metre-wide valley.”
The network learned that a 2014 article titled “Bridge to Nowhere” said there was no apparent solution to the flood hole in the bridge. The text was published in the local Hickory Record newspaper, reporting that “the bridge is still in ruins” eight months after flooding destroyed it in 2013. Nothing has changed in nine years.
source: Noticias
