High Country Briefs: Minor accidents keep patrol busy

Icy patches and careless drivers kept local highway patrol troopers busy Saturday night with “too many crashes to count,” a N.C. Highway Patrol spokesman said.

“Saturday night was a madhouse,” Sgt. D.D. Dawson said Monday morning. “We had a ton of wrecks — too many to count.”

He noted that the motoring mayhem resulted in no serious injuries, though. The worst incident injured six people, though all were treated and released from the Watauga Medical Center Saturday night.

Dawson said the collision, like most that night, was caused when the driver of a Ford Explorer hit a patch of ice on northbound U.S. 321 at around 7:30 p.m. The driver and his five passengers crossed the center divider just north of Blowing Rock, striking a southbound pickup truck and turning it on its side.

The pickup driver, who was carrying no passengers, received minor injuries, as did the five passengers in the SUV.

The victims’ names were unavailable at press time.

Dawson said most of the mishaps were simple fender-benders involving motorists sliding off the roadway.

“At one point, when I’d gone to the medical center to check on the driver of the Explorer, there were still seven wrecks pending,” Dawson said.

He cautioned drivers to heed wet weather alerts by decreasing speed and increasing following distance, even when long stretches of the roadway appear to be ice-free.

“The problem is people are driving normally when they run into these patches of ice,” Dawson said.

With just three troopers available to patrol the county Saturday night the rash of crashes taxed highway patrol resources to the extreme, Dawson said.

“[The troopers] did a good job cleaning up all those wrecks,” he said. “When you’ve only got three troopers, it can get crazy out there.”

Dawson said calls are prioritized immediately with troopers dispatched to the most serious first. That means all those fender-benders may have to wait awhile before an officer can reach the scene.

“The best thing to do is just be careful,” Dawson advised.

—Jerry Sena, staff writer

Hicks competency hearing postponed

His mental competency in question, Sugar Grove’s Keith Clint Hicks will have to wait, probably until January, for a decision on whether he’s capable of standing trial on charges he sexually exploited a 15-year-old Watauga girl.

His hearing was delayed last week and no new date was available by press time.

A Superior Court judge ordered in May that Hicks, 42, undergo a mental health evaluation at Raleigh’s Dorothea Dix Hospital to determine his competency for trial.

The Watauga County District Attorney’s office had requested the evaluation.

The girl’s mother, Tammy Sue Wagner of Vilas, has been charged separately for allegedly allowing her minor daughter to have sex with 33-year-old Scott Anthony Russell, who pleaded guilty to a charge of indecent liberties with a minor.

He was sentenced to 13-16 months in state prison and released Aug. 29.

Wagner was scheduled for trial last week. Her trial was also delayed, possibly until late January, according to the district attorney’s office.

—Jerry Sena, staff writer

Two arrested in separate drug cases

Heroin and opium trafficking charges are among 12 felony counts facing a Vilas woman after Watauga County Sheriff’s Office investigators arrested her last week.

Linda Love Ross, 58, of U.S. 421 N, will be in court Dec. 19 and Jan. 11 on two felony counts each of possession with intent to sell and deliver schedule II and III controlled substances, maintaining a dwelling place for a controlled substance. She’s also been charged with selling the drugs.

Ross was being held under a $100,000 secured bond.

In Triplett, 40-year-old David Lee Collins, of Wildwood Drive, was arrested last week and charged with one felony count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. Collins was being held pending a $7,500 secured bond and scheduled for District Court on Dec. 19.

—Jerry Sena, staff writer