A man whose car had broken down on the side of the Eatonton Bypass/U.S. 441 died after being hit by a car, according to Eatonton Police Chief Howell Cardwell.
Larry Russell Wight, 64, of Martin, was sitting on the road around 12:05 a.m. Saturday when a BMW car hit him. Wight succumbed to his injuries en route to The Medical Center, Navicent Health, in Macon.
The Putnam County Emergency Services ambulance was less than five minutes away from the trauma center when Wight died, authorities said.
Wight experienced car trouble earlier on Friday, had his car parked on the shoulder of the bypass, and had been working on it. Eatonton Police Department officers stopped, checked on, and talked with him several times.
“He kept saying a wrecker was coming,” Cardwell said. “And a local citizen who knew him took him to supper earlier that night and then took him back to his car. It makes no sense why he was sitting in the road and not with his car.”
Wight was sitting in the northbound lane of travel on the bypass about 800 feet away from his car, between Ingles and Glenwood Springs Road. When asked if Wight was sitting up, crouched over, or lying down like he was experiencing a medical episode, Cardwell said he was sitting up.
“One car saw him and swerved around him, but the driver of the car behind that one couldn’t see him and struck him on the right side of its door panel,” Cardwell explained.
Cardwell said no charges are being filed against the driver in the incident.
Putnam County Coroner Hollis Harrison said due to the “strange situation,” he requested an autopsy, but the GBI Crime Lab refused to take the body. Harrison ruled the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head and extremities.
Cardwell said Wight had been living in a camper “somewhere on Lake Sinclair” and was in the process of moving everything out and back to Martin.