A single-vehicle motorcycle crash killed one person Monday afternoon on the southbound U.S. 17/N.C. 53 Bypass in Jacksonville, reducing traffic to one lane for hours as investigators worked the scene. The Jacksonville Police Department had not released the name of the person who died.
The Jacksonville Police Department issued a traffic alert at 4:32 p.m. Monday after the crash, according to WCTI-12, which reported that the collision left southbound lanes down to a single lane of travel. The road did not fully reopen until 6:47 p.m., per the same police department update relayed by the station.
That timeline lines up with another account of the closure: a report from Yahoo News noted that southbound traffic on Highway 17 was down to one lane for over two hours as crews cleared the crash. Drivers were asked to avoid the area while the investigation and cleanup were underway, according to police, who described the incident as a single-vehicle motorcycle crash.
What Police Have Confirmed So Far
As of Monday evening, Jacksonville police had not identified the person killed in the crash, and no additional details about the circumstances of the wreck had been made public. Jacksonville station WITN reported that it would share further updates on air and online as more information became available.
The Jacksonville crash comes just a day after a separate, unrelated motorcycle fatality was reported roughly 100 miles away in Horry County, South Carolina. There, a 44-year-old man from Eden, North Carolina, identified as Christopher Sims, died from injuries suffered in a single-vehicle motorcycle crash near 1610 S Hwy 17 Bypass around 1:45 a.m. Sunday, according to WPDE, which reported that Surfside Beach Police were investigating that case.
The two crashes are not connected, but both left families and communities waiting for answers after fatal single-vehicle motorcycle wrecks within a day of each other along stretches of Highway 17. In Jacksonville, police said speeding was suspected in the single-vehicle crash, and no further details had been released as of Monday evening.
