The Fayette Citizen-News Page
Wednesday, August 5, 1998
Fayette teen dies in fiery SUV crash

5 deputies risk burns trying to extricate youth

By LANA MIDDLETON
Staff Writer

A Fayette teenager died in a burning sports utility vehicle Sunday night as five sheriff's deputies fought the intense flames with small car fire extinguishers, attempting to get close enough to pull the youth from the crumpled wreckage.

Five Fayette County Sheriff's deputies are described as "taking great personal risk" to fight flames that consumed 17-year-old Stephen Roy Roberson of Fayetteville in his twisted Chevy Blazer.

The officers and the four county and city fire vehicles that came to their distress call could not extricate the youth, fire and law officers report.

Autopsy results were not back on Roberson by press time.

The youth is believed to have lost control of his vehicle about 9:30 p.m., according to sheriff's department reports. Officers estimate that he was travelling northbound at a high rate of speed around a corner just south of Bethea Road.

"The driver was apparently driving too fast to negotiate a curve when he left the roadway and went down an embankment through some smaller trees before impacting a larger tree. The vehicle came to rest approximately 20 feet from the edge of the road in a wooded area," according to a press release from Maj. Wayne Hannah of the Sheriff's Department.

Four Fayette County Sheriff's Department deputies and a supervisor attempted to rescue the boy from the fire after an officer saw slight movement in Roberson's Blazer, said Sheriff's Dept. Capt. Ken Rose. The lawmen climbed down through the brush and trees to where the SUV was crumpled and tried to use their patrol car fire extinguishers to put out the flames.

"They got a little cooked by the fire. They had red faces and [smoke damaged] uniforms," Rose said.

"It's a terrible situation, a terrible situation," Rose said. "It was at great personal risk to the officers that they went down there... But the guys, it makes me so proud to hear what went on," as they fought to get Roberson.

It took four hours for the vehicle to be extinguished and lifted out of the woods with a crane. And it took about an hour more for the body to be removed, such was the extent of the wreckage and fire damage, said county Fire Department Capt. Pete Nelms.

The county and Fayetteville fire departments sent four fire and medic vehicles following the dispatch call: "person entrapped," and brought everything they would need to get the boy out, Nelms said. However, when they got there the vehicle was "fully involved" in flames far from where it left the road. Firemen did not report seeing any movement inside the SUV, Nelms said.

Fiery entrapments are mentally tough for emergency crews, the captain said.

"That is very tragic situation. It's one that most firefighters and paramedics don't ever want to face," Nelms said. The vehicle's landing far off the road in a forested area hurt the firefighters' ability to tackle the blaze so that it could remove the occupant, he said. Thus, extricating the body was not possible until the vehicle was put back on the road, he said.

"Mr. Roberson was not wearing a safety belt," Hannah wrote. The body was sent to Georgia State Crime Lab to determine the reason for death, according to Hannah.

"This is the fifth traffic fatality to occur this year in unincorporated Fayette County," Hannah wrote.


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