Copied from the local newspaper...
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September 23. 2005 12:00AM
Woman dies after fiery vehicle accident
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Power company personnel work to remove a broken power pole Thursday after it was hit head on in an auto accident on Junior Order Home Road near New Jersey Church Road. Brandy Dayle Koonts died from injuries received in the accident. (Bobbie Jamison/The Dispatch)
BY ROBERT COOPER
The Dispatch
A woman died Thursday night after her car ran off Junior Order Home Road and smashed into a power pole earlier in the day. The accident trapped her in her burning 2005 Ford sport utility vehicle.
Brandy Dayle Koonts, who was airlifted to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center after the wreck, was pronounced dead at 10:55 p.m. Thursday.
Koonts, 26, of Holloways Church Road, was traveling east on the road around 2:19 p.m. Thursday when the accident happened, but many of the details are not yet known.
"I was looking out the window and I heard a boom and the power lines shook," Joel Lopp said. He still has a burn spot in his yard where the car tipped on its side and burned. "I thought it was a tractor trailer caught on the power lines."
N.C. Highway Patrol troopers can only determine that the contributing circumstance to the accident was driving in a "careless, erratic manner," which is a general term used any time a driver loses control of the car. The speed limit in that section of the road is 55 mph.
Lopp called 911 and bystanders began to gather around the car in an attempt to help her.
"Quite a few people" helped tip the car back onto its wheels, Lopp said, but they could not help Koonts out of the car.
The Linwood Fire Department arrived on the scene first. While volunteers "broke the windows out, we were working on the fire," Capt. Kenneth Everhart said. Koonts was breathing as she was taken from the scene.
But Koonts had burns over 100 percent of her body, Everhart said: "She was burned from head to toe. The car was fully engulfed."
The South Lexington Fire Department also arrived on the scene and used the jaws of life device to free Koonts from the vehicle, Everhart said. Air Care arrived within seven minutes after being called.
This accident is probably the third on that street within a year, Lopp said. "It's a straight stretch so people think they can go 100 miles an hour down the road."