Fatality is 2nd for family on U.S. 52

Sister now has lost father, brother in same area

Marshall

The Post and Courier

BONNEAU — It was already hard on Peggy Dean emotionally to drive a stretch of U.S. Highway 52 in the Santee Circle community where a crash claimed her father's life almost 15 years ago.

Now it may be unbearable.

Dean's brother died Wednesday in a collision that happened about a half-mile from the spot where their father was fatally injured on July 14, 1993.

"It's strange, isn't it?" Dean said Thursday as her family sat around the dining room table of her brother's house on Canady Branch Road.

It's a coincidence the family thought about much of Wednesday after the pickup truck driven by her brother, Tim Marshall, skidded past a stop sign onto U.S. 52 and into the path of an 18-wheeler hauling rock.

Marshall, 50, was driving a Ford F350 1-ton pickup and was hauling a utility trailer loaded with a forklift, the S.C. Highway Patrol said.

Marshall's wife of 27 years, Sharon, said he was headed to work at Jackson and Vereen's Turf Products in Moncks Corner. He was retired from Santee Cooper.

The couple had been together most of Wednesday morning before the 1:30 p.m. crash. They'd picked up the utility trailer and equipment, had lunch and were driving home when Sharon Marshall smelled rubber burning.

The spare tire, mounted under the bed of the pickup, was burning, she said. Her husband used the garden hose to put it out.

"He said the spare tire was hitting the exhaust pipe and it was hot and that's what made the tire burn," she said.

His mother, Mary Marshall, asked if he wanted her to follow him make sure he got to Moncks Corner safely, but he said he'd be fine.

It's about a mile from the Marshalls' house to the stop sign at Canady Branch Road and U.S. 52. Sharon Marshall tried her husband's cell phone twice but didn't get an answer. Within five minutes after her husband drove off, she got a call from his cell phone, but it wasn't Tim Marshall. A passerby was calling to tell her about the wreck.

Sharon Marshall and the couple's only child, Bryan, 24, drove to the intersection. The 18-wheeler had slammed into the driver's side of the pickup truck and Tim Marshall was pinned inside.

"I went up there and I told him I loved him," a tearful Sharon Marshall said.

Mary Marshall arrived at the wreck right after it happened.

"He kept saying he was going to be all right. He said his legs were hurting," she said.

The driver of the 18-wheeler, Mark Eudy, 36, of Albemarle, N.C., was not found to be at fault in the wreck, but he told Sharon Marshall he was sorry. Mary Marshall prayed with him.

"That boy was pitiful," she said.

The crash was similar to the one that killed her husband, Frank Marshall, 64, 15 years ago. He was on his way to work early one morning at a Santee Cooper generating station when another driver pulled out of a driveway and into his path.

The impact sent Frank Marshall's truck into a tree. He was taken to the hospital and died about an hour later.

Peggy Dean said she quit driving the south side of U.S. 52 after the crash. After losing her brother on the same road, Dean said she might have to avoid it altogether.

"It brings back hurt," she said.