A 30-year-old Roanoke Rapids woman died Friday afternoon when her car collided with a pickup truck towing two jet skis at a rural intersection in Hertford County, becoming the sixth traffic fatality in the county this year. Breiana Latrice Boyce was pronounced dead at the scene after her 2023 Nissan struck a stop sign, veered off the road, and caught fire following the crash at the Murfreesboro Bypass and Charlie Powell Road.
The wreck happened shortly before 5 p.m. as Boyce traveled north on Charlie Powell Road and attempted to cross the four-lane bypass, according to the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. Her Nissan collided with a 2025 GMC Sierra driven by 52-year-old Brian Jones of Chesapeake, Virginia, who was pulling a trailer loaded with two jet skis. The impact sent Boyce's car off the road to the left and into a ditch, where it caught fire, while Jones's GMC traveled off the right side of the road and struck a ditch of its own.
Three vehicles were involved in total. A Ford SUV driven by 48-year-old Kimberly Brooks of Murfreesboro had been stopped at a stop sign on the opposite side of Charlie Powell Road when debris from the crash reached the vehicle, but neither Brooks nor her 72-year-old passenger, Clarice Wiggins of Ahoskie, was injured by flying debris. Jones and his passenger, 43-year-old Erin Jones of Chesapeake, were not seriously injured in the collision.
Trooper Who Investigated July Ahoskie Death Also Filed This Report
North Carolina State Highway Patrol Trooper Zach Mize filed the accident report on the Murfreesboro crash, and no charges have been filed against any of the drivers involved, per the same account. Mize previously provided a statement about a fatal pedestrian crash on Newsome Grove Road in Ahoskie on July 11, according to Lawsuit Winner, a case in which no charges were filed against either driver either.
Under North Carolina General Statutes § 20-158(b)(1), drivers facing a stop sign at an intersection are required to come to a complete stop and yield the right-of-way to vehicles already traveling on the through highway before entering or crossing it, according to McCabe Law Offices. The statute helps explain why troopers routinely find fault with side-road drivers who fail to yield when crossing high-speed bypasses like the one where Boyce died. The Murfreesboro Bypass, part of US 158/258, is a four-lane bypass around downtown Murfreesboro, according to planning documents from the North Carolina Department of Transportation.
A Deadly Stretch for Hertford County
Boyce's death marks the sixth traffic fatality in Hertford County so far this year, with no further details provided here about the timing or circumstances of the county's other fatalities. Across the three-county area covered by NCHP Troop A, District II, the toll now stands at 10 fatalities recorded since the start of the year, including six in Hertford County. The supplied account does not establish how those deaths were distributed over time. According to the North Carolina Department of Transportation, its crash-data figures include only reportable motor vehicle traffic crashes, so they do not necessarily capture every roadway incident.
Troop A, District II operates out of its Ahoskie headquarters at 242 NC Highway 42 West, overseeing state crash investigations across the three-county area, according to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. The agency's broader Troop A command is based in Greenville. Rural fatal crashes involving failure to yield or centerline overcorrections are not new to the county — in December 2017, Troop A District II recorded 15 traffic fatalities for the year, seven of them in Hertford County alone, according to RRSpin.
Remembering Breiana Boyce
ECU Health Roanoke-Chowan Hospital in Ahoskie was mentioned in the supplied reports, though the newspaper's report did not indicate Boyce was transported there. The report did not provide verified details about Boyce's family or education.
The article also discusses fatal wrecks across the rural county. No criminal charges have been filed in connection with the Murfreesboro Bypass collision, and investigators have not released further findings beyond the accident report filed by Trooper Mize.
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