On September 30, a North Carolina man was killed after his GPS directed him to a defunct bridge that collapsed into a stream.
Phillip Paxson, a 47-year-old dad of two daughters, was driving his Jeep late at night from his oldest daughter’s birthday party in Hickory when his GPS directed him to a bridge that had been inoperable since extreme floods wrecked it in July 2013.
Paxson’s mother-in-law, Linda McPhee Koenig, said on Facebook on Tuesday that it was a dark and wet night, and he was following his GPS, which took him down a concrete road to a bridge that plunged into a river, The bridge had been demolished [nine] years before and had never been rebuilt. It lacked any safeguards or warning indications that may have prevented the death of a 47-year-old dad of two girls. His family and friends will miss him terribly. It was a completely avoidable mishap. They are mourning his passing.
Paxson’s family is now attempting to draw attention to the disaster, which they think might have been averted with adequate maintenance or even just city signage notifying vehicles not to drive near the bridge.
This was an avoidable catastrophe; the bridge he ran over at night had a gaping hole and there were no barriers, according to a GoFundMe page named “Paxson family.” This has been the case for many years. No one would accept responsibility for repairing it, so he is now on his own. Please pray for the family at this trying time.
The North Carolina State Highway Patrol responded to concerns of an overturned automobile in a stream near Catawba County’s 24th Street Place Northeast, a private road.
He did not jump from a bridge. He didn’t drive over a cliff, a loved one at the tragedy scene, where residents had set up a temporary monument, stated. He drove himself to death through that 20-foot ravine.
According to a 2014 Hickory Record story headlined “BRIDGE TO NOWHERE: No fix in sight for neighborhood’s gaping hole, the bridge is still in decay eight months after floods wrecked it in 2013. In nine years, nothing had improved.
Even barriers warning vehicles not to cross the bridge had been swept away.
A document acquired by the outlet traced the road to subdividers Keener, Shook, and Tarlton – a firm that disbanded in 1994.
Paxson had a lifetime affinity for muscle vehicles, motorbikes, dirt bikes, boats, almost anything with an engine, according to his obituary.
He rode motorbikes throughout the world with his father-in-law. With family and friends, he and his wife, as well as their two girls, loved camping and boating. Phil prioritized his family and his friends roughly equally, according to the obituary. With a perpetual smile on his face, he would give you the shirt from his back or persuade you out of the one on yours.
