3/24/1998 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Late in the afternoon, less than a week ago, Thursday, March 12,1998 , Mrs. Jean Mane Stout lost her life in a gruesome two vehicle collision. I arrived on the scene several minutes after the accident happened. I waited with my boys for more than an hour and a half until the tow vehicles could remove the fruit hauling truck from Mrs. Stout's car. (Show pictures) In the wake of such an unfortunate accident Mrs. Sout leaves behind the fifteen month old twins Emily Stout and Rebecca Stout, her four year old son Joey Stout, a sixteen year old stepdaughter Lindsay and her husband Rick Stout, a thirty-five year old cook who works for the Waffle House. This accident closed King's highway for two and a half hours and it might also have been prevented if a stoplight had been in place at the intersection of 8th Street and King's Highway. I purchased a retail/wholesale nursery on King's Highway in 1989 at the corner of 5th Street SW and King's highway. The posted speed limit between Route 60 and Oslo Road is forty-five miles per hour. At the time, I wondered why the posted limit was not more like fifty-five miles per hour. Because the few cars I had observed traveling past my nursery were speeding in excess of sixty miles per hour. It. did not take long for me to discover King's highway was not made for high speed vehicular traffic. The surface of the road is uneven and pocked with the patch work of numerous repairs. The vehicles which most frequently passed by my nursery in 1989 and 1990 were fruit hauling trucks, grove sprayers, and slow moving tractors. I used to laugh when I told friends it was so quiet and peaceful along King's highway that I could go out and stand by the roadside for five minutes and not see a car come by. This peacefulness ended for me the day my young purebred,golden, Labrador puppy "Sunshine" ran up on to the highway and was killed by a speeding car. It was late in the afternoon and I was watering some plants by hand. I could not see the road from where I was but I heard the screeching of tires and a dull thump on the road just beyond the chain link fence which surrounds my property. It was the kind of sound a car makes when it runs over a cardboard box. It took the woman driving the car a few second to stop and turn around to see what had hit her car. She called to me from the road. To ask if I knew who owned this puppy. I knew instantly seeing the tears in her eyes that something tragic had happened to one of my pets. It was "Sunshine" the female. One of two Labs I had purchased earlier in the year from Brian and Michelle Jenkins. Evidently "Sunshine" and "Midnight," the male Lab, had been playing tag when she found an open gate in the fence and darted up on to the highway. I picked up the lifeless body of the dog and took her back inside the fence. I thanked the woman for stopping and tried to console her as she apologized to me over and over again about how the dog had "just appeared" on the road without warning in front of her car. Stanley Bristol, the driver of the Estes citrus truck said similar words to Marie Oliver, the Florida Highway Patrol Trooper investigating the accident that took Mrs. Stout's life. Jean Stout evidently failed to heed the stop sign and "just appeared," in front of Stanley Bristol's truck when her vehicle cross over the bridge an into the path of his fruit laden truck. It is ironic to me that one week earlier, I had asked Sheriff Gary Wheeler to give me some statistics on how many accidents have occurred between 9th Street SW (Oslo Road) and 26 Street (Walker Avenue). The distance between these two points is approximately four miles. The figures are staggering! Between 1/1/97 and 12/31/97 there were two hundred and twenty accidents on this one four mile stretch of road! There is a stop light at the intersection of 26th (Walker Avenue) and 58th, there is another one at the intersection of Route 60 and 58th and there is a blinking light at the intersection of Oslo and 58th but there are no lights between Oslo and Route 60. Why aren't there any stop lights between here and there? How many more people have to die or be injured on the most dangerous section of highway in Indian River County before one two or three stop lights are placed along the route to slow down the traffic? Can we expect to see something done in the next three to five months? MARCH 24, 1998 -34- 11J