A 25-year-old Jacksonville man is facing multiple felony charges after troopers say he drove drunk, crashed on Rocky Run Road, and then fled the scene, leaving another person dead. Nicholas Ray Proctor was booked into the Onslow County Detention Center on Friday and is scheduled to appear in court the same day.
According to charging documents cited by WCTI, Proctor was driving impaired on Rocky Run Road in Onslow County when the crash occurred. Troopers with the North Carolina State Highway Patrol accused him of driving recklessly and failing to maintain lane control before the wreck, and the charging documents allege his actions led to another person's death.
Troopers have charged Proctor with felony death by vehicle, felony hit and run involving serious injury or death, driving while impaired, reckless driving to endanger, and failure to maintain lane control. Investigators also accused him of leaving the crash scene rather than stopping to render aid. A magistrate set his bond at $50,000, and it remains unclear whether Proctor has posted it.
What the Felony Charges Could Mean
Felony death by vehicle is a Class D felony under North Carolina General Statute § 20-141.4, and it applies when impaired driving is proven to be the proximate cause of a fatality, with a maximum potential sentence of up to 204 months in prison depending on the defendant's prior record, according to Hatch, Little & Bunn, LLP. Prosecutors pursuing that charge must establish impairment and proximate cause, but do not need to prove legal malice.
Separately, failing to stop at the scene of a crash involving serious injury or death is a Class F felony under North Carolina General Statute § 20-166(a), a charge that carries a mandatory minimum one-year driver's license revocation upon conviction, per Browning & Long, PLLC. State law requires all drivers to stop and render aid at crash scenes regardless of fault.
To sustain the underlying impaired driving charge, prosecutors can rely on either appreciable impairment of a driver's mental or physical faculties or a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 or higher, under North Carolina General Statute § 20-138.1, as explained by Powers Law Firm PA. Those standards apply broadly across the state's public highways, streets, and vehicular areas.
A Road With a Troubled Recent History
This is not the first deadly wreck reported along that stretch of roadway. North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers investigated a fatal crash on Rocky Run Road near Jasper Road in Onslow County in June, after a passenger vehicle struck and killed a bicyclist, according to WITN-TV.
The crash also arrives amid a broader rise in fatal wrecks across Onslow County. The county recorded 25 traffic fatalities in 2024, a substantial jump from just three traffic deaths a decade earlier in 2014, according to 10-year state Division of Motor Vehicles data cited by Paynter Law. In a separate recent single-year reporting period, the county logged 3,946 total crashes resulting in 28 deaths and 1,677 injuries, with nearby Jacksonville accounting for 1,452 of those crashes and four fatalities, per figures compiled by the Ricci Law Firm.
Impaired Driving's Outsized Toll Statewide
Statewide, alcohol-related crashes accounted for 378 of the 1,528 total traffic deaths recorded on North Carolina roadways in 2025, according to data shared by JoCoReport — meaning alcohol involvement factors into roughly one out of every four fatal collisions across the state. State Department of Transportation crash data shows why those wrecks are so often deadly: collisions involving alcohol are more than five times as likely to result in a fatality compared to non-alcohol-related crashes, according to Tatum & Atkinson. While alcohol-involved wrecks make up only about 4% of total crashes statewide, they account for more than 22% of fatal ones.
North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers routinely lead fatal crash investigations across Onslow County's rural and unincorporated routes, including a February 2024 head-on collision near Richlands that killed a 21-year-old local detention officer, as previously reported by WCTI News 12. Defendants booked into the Onslow County Detention Center in Jacksonville, located at 717 Court Street, undergo an initial appearance before a judicial magistrate, who weighs flight risk and public safety in setting pretrial release conditions such as the secured bond imposed on Proctor.
The identity of the person killed in the Rocky Run Road crash has not been released, and it remains unclear whether troopers administered blood or breath testing on Proctor following the wreck. Proctor is due in court Friday, where additional details about the case may emerge.
