Car goes over bank and crashes
By Dwight Otwell Editor

Billy Ray O'Dell, of Murphy, was extracted from his car after an accident Thursday on Hwy. 19/74. It was termed "one of the best extractions" an emergency worker had ever seen.

A Murphy man was airlifted out after he apparently ran in front of another vehicle Thursday and wrecked, causing his car to go over a bank off of Hwy. 19.

Billy Ray O'Dell, 65, of 30 Harper Road, Murphy, had to be removed from his car, which was slanted down a bank toward the river. Two people in the other vehicle were taken to Murphy Medical Center for treatment.

According to a report filed by North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper J.J. Brinke, O'Dell was stopped at the stop sign at Regal Road and Hwy. 19. A vehicle driven by Victor Robert Feltz, 75, of 380 Pine Dale Lane, Andrews, was traveling west on Hwy. 19.

O'Dell failed to yield to Feltz's pickup truck and the vehicles collided, the report states. O'Dell's 2004 Kia rolled across the roadway, off the road and down an embankment while Feltz's pickup truck came to an uncontrolled rest in the westbound lane of Hwy. 19, Brinke wrote. "That is one of the best extractions I've seen," said Randy Alwine, of the Cherokee

A helicopter landed on the four-lane to carry Billy Ray O'Dell to Erlanger Hospital where he is recovering from the two-vehicle accident. O'Dell suffered fractured ribs.

County EMS. "We started the IV in the car. It is called a 'hot load' when you do that and skip the ambulance. We took him straight to the helicopter."

An EMS worker said it was fortunate that a tree stopped O'Dell's car or he would have gone into the river.

"Everyone worked together fabulously," Alwine said.

While they were extracting O'Dell from his car, there was a rear end collision on Hwy. 19/74 in the backed up traffic.

O'Dell was charged with failure to yield.

O'Dell was still in Erlanger Hospital Monday. His sister, Linda Sue Burrell, said O'Dell has seven or eight fractures of the ribs but he is doing better. He will have to undergo physical therapy, she said.