Retired deputy dies at home, three months after horrific car crash. I-Team found it might have been prevented

MULBERRY, Ga. -  What happened to Patricia and Walt Carper had happened multiple times before on West Rock Quarry Road. And it might have been prevented, a FOX 5 I-Team investigation found.

For months before the crash, the head football coach at nearby Seckinger High School had begged Gwinnett County’s Department of Transportation to install some kind of barrier at the dead end, where the Carpers would careen into an embankment.

"All I know is that people are getting hurt, and there’s a very real chance somebody’s going to lose their life," Coach Tony Lotti told the I-Team in March. At that time, Carper was still hospitalized.

Downward spiral

What we know:

Carper, a retired Clarke County Sheriff’s deputy, died in her home May 20, according to her Georgia death certificate.

Even before the crash, she suffered from kidney and heart problems, and she had just been discharged from a hospital stay in Braselton when the wreck happened Feb. 4.

She suffered broken ribs, bruising and oxygen deprivation in the ordeal. Her daughter, Heidi Rutledge, said that for the next 15 weeks, her mother was in and out of hospital care. She remained in constant pain, had difficulty breathing, suffered an infection from being intubated, and lost the use of her left hand from lying on her arm for so long before her rescue, Heidi said.

She had been out of the hospital for 12 days before she died. The cause of death on her death certificate: "acute and chronic respiratory failure with hypoxia (lack of oxygen)."

"The wreck caused my mom’s death," Heidi told the I-Team.

"She was up on her feet when she came out of the hospital the first time, before the wreck," she said. "But after the wreck, she’d been bedbound and couldn’t hardly move her body."

Trapped more than 17 hours

The backstory:

The day of the crash, Heidi said her stepfather, Walt Carper, picked her mother up at the hospital. Then after a stop at a grocery store, her mother took the driver’s seat of the Dodge Caravan and headed back toward their home in Barrow County.

But she took a wrong turn in the dark at a roundabout and wound up on the south end of West Rock Quarry Road, which runs along the back side of Seckinger High School in Gwinnett.

The Carpers had no way of knowing it, but for months Coach Lotti had been lobbying county DOT to make safety improvements to the road. Some students had been T-boned turning left out of a school exit, along with multiple other accidents involving drivers running off the dead end.

"We’ll be sitting on the front porch or doing something out here, and I’ll see cars just flying down here," West Rock Quarry Road resident George Grob told the I-Team in March. "And then we’ll hear them go off. I bet I’ve come down here for probably 10 or 15 people.

"One night, it was two of them," Grob said. "Like, within an hour of each other."

Coach Lotti asked the county for speed breakers, as well as a barricade at the cul-de-sac. With poor lighting, the distant lights of I-85 created an illusion that the roadway kept going, he said.

Heidi said that’s what misled her mother.

"She looked through the trees, and I guess she (saw) that it was ongoing cars, so she thought it was an ongoing road," Heidi said.

Driving off the embankment was only the beginning of the Carpers’ suffering. The minivan landed on its side, and neither Patricia nor Walt could reach their cell phones.

A Gwinnett County Police report estimated the crash time at 7 p.m. 

Heidi said she tried to call them every few hours. She finally went to her parents’ home, found her mother’s tablet, and located her mother’s phone just north of the interstate. She called police to report them missing just after noon on Feb. 5.

Around the same time, some passersby found the Carpers, Gwinnett County 911 records show. It was past 1 p.m. when both Patricia and Walt had been extracted.

It was a school day.

"When we heard about the couple that was stranded, my heart just sunk," Lotti said. "We had no idea they were there."

Walt, 71, suffered a brain injury in the crash. He’s still recovering in a nursing and rehabilitation facility in Monroe, his stepdaughter said.

Politics played a part

 

Why you should care:

Late last year, Gwinnett DOT had been working with Lotti to address safety hazards on the road.

The county conducted a traffic study, recording speeds as high as 90 and 100 miles per hour, where the speed limit is 25.

DOT added two new signs – one saying, "School," another saying, "Dead end 1000 feet." Lotti said he and traffic officials discussed adding speed breakers.

But then everything came to a stop.

Mulberry, a new city, formed on Jan. 1.

"Congratulations! You are now in the new city of Mulberry," a traffic analyst told Lotti in an email obtained by the I-Team. "Unfortunately, we do not have an agreement with the City of Mulberry to install speed humps inside the city limits. We are stopping all progress and closing the request for a Public Hearing for West Rock Quarry Road."

The email referred Lotti to the city’s website.

The trouble there: The city doesn’t have a roads department. Its charter, approved by the state Legislature and ratified by voters, says the county must keep up roadwork during a two-year transition period.

But Gwinnett and Mulberry have been locked in a heated dispute over the charter, which the county contends shifts too much financial burden to county taxpayers. The county is challenging the charter in court, the case currently with the Georgia Court of Appeals.

The county filed another lawsuit last month against the state over Senate Bill 138, aimed specifically at Gwinnett and stripping its sovereign immunity for a year if a judge finds it violated the new law. Sponsored by the area’s Republican state senator, Clint Dixon, the bill passed this year and was signed by Gov. Brian Kemp.

When the I-Team contacted Gwinnett DOT Director Lewis Cooksey earlier this year, he said the county would need to have an intergovernmental agreement with Mulberry before putting any more work into West Rock Quarry Road.

But the second time the I-Team reached out, Cooksey agreed safety is paramount and said the county would make additional safety improvements after all.

Within days, a barrier had been erected at the dead end, and a new warning – "Road closed ahead" – was painted in giant letters on the road surface.

"We were happy to help," Cooksey told the I-Team in a text. "We will continue to monitor the area and we ask that everyone use the utmost caution when traveling."

Cooksey did not respond to messages about this story, and Gwinnett County Transportation had no comment on Patricia Carper’s death.

‘We need to work together’

What they're saying:

"I think this is a perfectly good example of why we need to work together," Mulberry Mayor Michael Coker said.

Coker said West Rock Quarry Road will be the city’s responsibility eventually, but for now, it’s the county’s job to maintain it.

"You guys came out and did that story, you brought attention to this issue," he said of FOX 5’s story in March. "And ultimately the county made the changes, they put up those barricades. So I think that tells you everything you need to know, as to whose responsibility was that road."

Heidi said her mother would still be alive if the barricade had gone up sooner.

Who she was

Local perspective:

Patricia Carper served 22 years with Clarke County, retiring in 2010. She worked as a jailer, and a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office said she’s remembered as an excellent marksman.

She’s also remembered for taking over operations of the Athens jail in May 2000, the spokeswoman said. That was so other deputies could attend the funeral of a lieutenant who had died on duty in a car crash.

Carper was laid to rest Wednesday at St. Matthew Catholic Church in Winder. She’s survived by her husband, two children and three grandsons.

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