Les Jones

East Tennessee > Car, Motorcycle in Little River in Smoky Mountains

UPDATE MARCH 15: new information here.

Melissa and I decided to enjoy the spring-like weather and take a ride through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The ride included Little River Road between Townsend and Gatlinburg. In 36 years of living here and going to the park hundreds of times I never saw a vehicle in the river, but today we saw two. Both were just west of The Sinks.

The first was a motorcycle. Rangers and rescue personnel were still on the scene when we went by, and it looks like they were pulling someone up the river bank. The motorcycle's headlight was still burning, as you can see in the picture. In fact, the headlight may be the only part of the motorcycle you'll recognize in this out of focus picture. I couldn't get out of the car without interfering with the rescue, so I quickly snapped this out of the car window while our lane of traffic was briefly stopped.

Down the road just a few curves we were shocked to see a second accident. We stopped and talked to the people at the scene, one of whom was the car's driver, a woman from Friendsville. She and her daugher had stopped and gotten out of the car to look at the river. The car started rolling and before they knew what happened the car was tail-end into the water. No one was hurt.

The driver said her accident happened about an hour earlier. At some point while they were standing there with other onlookers, they saw a motorcycle pass a line of cars at high speed. Someone said "there goes the next victim" and about five minutes later someone came by and said a motorcycle had hit a tree and gone into the river. Someone said there was a child riding on the back. That's all second-hand, so take it with a grain of salt.

We ate dinner in Maryville at my mom's house and watched the 6 o'clock news, but didn't see anything about the accident. We're anxious to find out the condition of the motorcycle's passengers. More pictures below the jump.

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