GLADE SPRING, Va. – A 34-year-old Glade Spring man was killed Thursday in a three-vehicle crash that shut down State Route 91 between Glade Spring and Saltville for four hours.
Brian Dean Arnold was driving a Suzuki Sidekick owned by Home Nursing Service of Southwest Virginia when a man driving a larger Ford F-250 crossed the center line and hit him head-on.
According to state police, Arnold was not wearing a seatbelt.
The driver of the pickup, 22-year-old Randall Adam Poole, of Abingdon, was wearing a seatbelt and was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
A third vehicle, a Toyota Corolla, also was involved in the crash but the occupants, 64-year-old Thomas Walter Holley and 39-year-old Michael Holley, both of Saltville, were not injured.
The home health care agency had no immediate comment Thursday on the wreck or Arnold’s death. Poole could not be reached for comment.
Senior Trooper C. A. Dixon, of the Virginia State Police, said charges are pending against Poole, and the cause of the crash is still under investigation.
Carmen Helton, who lives near the place where the wreck happened Tuesday morning, said she and her husband went running when they heard the noise, which she said sounded like “a bomb going off.”
“We busted the window, but there was just nothing we could do,” Helton said. “It was terrible. I’ll never get the image out of my head.”
“He was off the road for a split-second, that’s what he said,” Helton said of Poole. “He just took his eye off the road for a split-second.”
Helton said wrecks are not uncommon on this curvy stretch of highway between Glade Spring and Saltville, but this is the only fatality she knows of.
“We’ve had cars in this yard, they just kind of destroyed the fence,” she said. “I was hit on this road when I was 6 years old by a pickup truck, and by the grace of God I’m still here.”
The wreck happened in McCall’s Gap, a natural gap through the mountains with a sharp curve at each end.
“They [cars] come through here and just run too fast. They run off in yards, in ditches, run people off the road,” said Marvin Bise-Phibbs, Helton’s uncle who also lives along the stretch of road. “We’ve had more close calls than you can imagine.”
On both ends, the gap is posted with a 35 mph suggested speed and a warning about the curves, but Bise-Phibbs, who was born and raised beside the road, said people fly past so fast, at 60 mph or better. “It’s like the Daytona 500.”
As a child, he said, he could safely play in the road, but much has changed. The number of wrecks has increased over the years, especially in the past decade.
“Cars are faster and have got more power, and people drive them faster,” he said, “and you know this society’s in a hurry. Everybody’s in a hurry.”
After Thursday’s fatal crash, he has some advice for motorists traveling this stretch of highway: “Be careful,” he said, “and slow down.”
dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701
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