High school coach begged Gwinnett County for months to fix a dangerous road. Then a terrifying wreck happened

BARROW COUNTY, Ga. - Last month Pat and Walt Carper endured a night of terror on a dead-end road behind Seckinger High School.

Driving home after dark in their Dodge Caravan, Pat took a wrong turn at a roundabout near the school, drove down a hill into a darkened cul-de-sac, then careened off an embankment into a ditch.

The car landed on its side, and the couple remained trapped for more than 12 hours before police found them the following afternoon, according to a Gwinnett County Police crash report.

What they’re saying: Pat’s daughter, Heidi Rutledge, said she became worried when her parents didn’t answer their phones. She finally went to their home, found her mother’s tablet and used it to locate her phone.

She said the crash apparently sent both of their phones flying, and her mother and stepfather, trapped in their seatbelts, couldn’t reach them to call for help.

"It could be worse, and l could’ve never found them," Rutledge said. "And I don’t know what could happen after that."

Pat, 64, suffered broken ribs and oxygen deprivation, her daughter said, and Walt, 71, suffered a brain injury. Both remain hospitalized.

The FOX 5 I-Team found all of this might have been prevented. But a jurisdictional spat between Gwinnett County and the new City of Mulberry got in the way.

A coach’s challenge

The backstory:

The Carpers’ crash happened Feb. 4.

Since the previous October, Seckinger High School’s head football coach, Tony Lotti, had been lobbying the county government to do something about the south end of West Rock Quarry Road.

Among the problems: Drivers getting lost at the roundabout. Excessive speeds. A dead end that doesn’t look like one in the dark. And students being T-boned pulling out of a school parking lot exit.

"There’s been two accidents that I personally had to be the first responder to," Lotti told the I-Team. "The last one, in October, was a T-bone accident of one of the players. And so something needs to change."

The student in the October crash was transported out by ambulance but made a full recovery.

For months, Lotti said, he worked with Gwinnett County’s Department of Transportation. The county added two new signs on the road before the end of the year – one saying, "School," another saying, "Dead end 1000 feet."

Lotti said he and traffic officials discussed adding speed breakers, too.

But after Jan. 1, everything came to a stop. What changed?

"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 message left the coach flummoxed.

"I don’t understand how you can start a project, then just drop it," Lotti said, "when, in my opinion, there are lives on the line."

A wreck trap?

Big picture view:

The speed limit on that stretch of West Rock Quarry Road is 25 miles per hour. In a traffic study, Gwinnett County DOT recorded speeds as high as 90 and 100 miles per hour.

Lotti and residents who spoke with the I-Team pointed to several factors making the road treacherous.

The road slopes downward just before the school entrance, creating a blind spot and causing traffic to pick up speed, Lotti said.

Just beyond that is the dead end, so students turning left to exit sometimes mistakenly think oncoming traffic is turning right into the school, he said.

"And so people assume that they’re going to pull in to the right, and (when) they don’t, we have a T-bone," Lotti said.

The dead end can also be deceiving, the coach and nearby residents said. It’s poorly lit, and at night, the distant lights of Interstate 85 through the trees create an illusion that the road connects to the highway.

"If you’re not familiar with this road, you’re going to think it still keeps going," the coach said.

But it doesn’t. There’s a sudden dead end and a drop-off into a wooded ditch, where the Carpers’ Dodge Caravan landed.

"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 said. "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."

Residents say the traffic volume intensified after the school opened almost three years ago and the roundabout opened at the intersection of Sardis Church Road.

"It just scares me that someone is going to be very seriously hurt or killed by the speed and the people running off the road," resident Gayle Hayes said. "If there could be at least a guardrail, or some kind of flashing light, or something that’s a physical warning."

Stalled by politics

Dig deeper:

The email from the county traffic analyst told Coach Lotti to "please reach out to Mulberry from now on."

So he did, making a presentation to the Mulberry City Council in January.

Trouble is, Mulberry doesn’t have a roads department. The city charter, approved by the Georgia Legislature and ratified by voters, put the onus on the county government to maintain roads for a 2-year period.

The county is challenging the city’s charter in court, the case currently with the Georgia Court of Appeals.

The I-Team reached out to Gwinnett County DOT Director Lewis Cooksey, who said the county could continue its work on West Rock Quarry Road if the city and county signed an intergovernmental agreement.

Mulberry officials disagree.

"It’s just incorrect," Mulberry Mayor Pro Tem Michael Rudnick said. "We have a legally-binding document that’s our city charter, that was put through legislation last year, voted on by the voters, and is the document that the county and the city should be abiding by."

Rudnick and Mayor Michael Coker met with the I-Team near the school entrance earlier this month, both expressing their own safety concerns and frustrations with the county.

"The ironic thing is, in the litigation they’re arguing that our charter is unconstitutional, and Mulberry doesn’t exist," the mayor said. "And then on the other hand, they’re standing here and telling us that this is our responsibility."

Coach Lotti became so frustrated with the impasse, at one point he spent $350 of his own money buying speed bumps and a warning sign off Amazon. He said a councilman had suggested he install them himself.

The mayor, however, advised holding off.

"The city council here in Mulberry, we’ve offered, financially out of our own pockets, to do what we can to try to get signage or whatever we can do to make the area safer," he said. "But unfortunately, at the end of the day, it comes down to jurisdiction. And we just don’t have the jurisdiction to take action on a county road."

The county steps back in

The other side:

When the FOX 5 I-Team reached out to DOT Director Cooksey a second time, he 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 said in a text. "We will continue to monitor the area and we ask that everyone use the utmost caution when traveling."

Cooksey said an engineering study is needed to determine what else, if anything, is needed. Speed bumps, he cautioned, can lead to more wrecks if not placed correctly.

Lotti said he’s happy with the barrier but still believes the road needs speed breakers before the school entrance. He said drivers continue to speed, so he’s still worried about students exiting the school.

He even recorded a public service announcement about the dangerous road, shown to students in the school cafeteria.

"West Rock Quarry Road isn’t just another stretch of pavement," the coach says on the video. "It’s actually a danger zone if you’re not paying attention."

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