The North Carolina Highway Patrol is reporting that a Spruce Pine man has been charged with failing to reduce speed after causing a multi-vehicle accident that shut down most of Interstate 26 Monday morning around 7:45am, for several hours.
Trooper Rico Stephens said the wreck involved two passenger vehicles and a tractor-trailer and sent three people to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
35 year old Brett Carpenter of Spruce Pine was charged with failure to reduce speed. Carpenter’s Volkswagen Jetta was traveling east when it rear-ended a Chevy Silverado pickup truck. “That truck then struck a tractor-trailer, and the Silverado traveled off the road until it overturned and caught fire”, according to Trooper Stephens. The Jetta then hit another vehicle and came to a stop.
Two people in a pickup truck were taken to Mission Hospital with “non-life-threatening injuries. A private vehicle took Carpenter to Mission Hospital. He did not have serious injuries. The tractor-trailer driver was not injured.
