Hendersonville man in coma but stable after Memorial Day weekend crash in Mills River
George Fabe Russell- A Hendersonville man is in a coma after his SUV collided with a tanker truck on NC-280 in Mills River.
- The injured driver is expected to make a full recovery, according to Highway Patrol.
A Hendersonville man is in a coma after a serious highway crash May 25 in Mills River.
Samuel Mullenax, 31, of Hendersonville, was in stable condition as of May 26.
He was driving a Ford Explorer on North Carolina Highway 280 Sunday night when he collided with an empty gasoline tanker truck whose driver had made an improper left turn out of a driveway, North Carolina State Highway Patrol Sgt. Cory Hipp told the Times-News.
Hipp said that doctors at Mission Hospital, where Mullenax is being treated, told the Highway Patrol that he was “placed in a coma, basically, because he's in and out of surgery so much,” but that he would make a full recovery.
“We don’t believe impairment was a factor,” he added.
He said this type of crash, involving a driver making a left turn onto a highway, is “one of the more prevalent crashes that we see on a five-lane highway."
NC 280 was choked down to one lane in each direction near the site of the accident, near Gash Road, for around three hours afterward, Hipp said.
Traffic from vacation travel tends to contribute to higher rates of crashes over holiday weekends, he said, but this crash was between two local drivers at 9:41 p.m., when the roads were relatively clear.
“I'm not sure that anything would have happened” differently even if the truck had been full of gasoline, because the crash “didn't penetrate the tanker,” he said.
The driver of the tanker truck, Stephen Neill, 30, of Hendersonville, did not suffer any injuries and was charged with failure to yield.
George Fabe Russell is the Henderson County Reporter for the Hendersonville Times-News. Tips, questions, comments? Email him at GFRussell@gannett.com.