A 46-year-old Roxie man died at the scene and a 58-year-old Liberty man was hospitalized after their pickup trucks collided on Highway 48 near Berwick Castle Road in Amite County on Sunday morning. The crash happened at approximately 10:40 a.m., according to officials who responded to the scene.
Sean Anderson, 46, was driving a 1999 Chevrolet Silverado northbound on Berwick Castle Road when it collided with a 2008 GMC Sierra driven eastbound by William Neyland Jr., 58, of Liberty, as reported by WLBT. Anderson sustained fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene, while Neyland was taken to a local hospital with injuries. The Mississippi Highway Patrol is investigating the crash, and officials had released no further information at the time of the station's report.
A Rural Intersection With Limited Visibility
The crash site sits where Berwick Castle Road meets Mississippi Highway 48, an 83.6-mile state route that stretches across four southern Mississippi counties — Amite, Pike, Walthall, and Marion — linking rural communities including Centreville and Liberty, according to Wikipedia. Berwick Castle Road itself is a rural route near Liberty running through an area of low-density residential properties and timberland, per LandWatch.
Anderson's hometown of Roxie sits in neighboring Franklin County, roughly 20 miles north of the crash scene, according to a regional property listing from United Country Real Estate. Cross-county travel along rural state routes is routine in this part of southwest Mississippi, where towns are small and spread far apart.
Mississippi Highway Patrol Investigation
Crash investigations on state routes in Amite County fall to Mississippi Highway Patrol Troop M, a regional district headquartered in Brookhaven that covers eight southwestern counties stretching from the Mississippi River to Pike County, per the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.
Mississippi's Troubling Highway Safety Record
The crash lands amid a grim statistical backdrop for the state. An Insurance Institute for Highway Safety breakdown reported that Mississippi had the nation's highest per-capita traffic fatality rate in 2024, at 25.6 deaths per 100,000 residents, according to FOX 13.
Both vehicles involved in Sunday's crash predate a key federal safety mandate: the 1999 Chevrolet Silverado and the 2008 GMC Sierra were both built before model-year 2012, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration required Electronic Stability Control on all new light passenger vehicles, per reporting from FleetOwner.
Sparse Population, Long Response Routes
Amite County, where Sunday's crash occurred, had an estimated 2026 population of roughly 12,474 residents spread across 736 square miles, with Liberty serving as the county seat, according to the World Population Review. The county's low population density across a large rural footprint can extend emergency response times to remote highway crashes like this one.
Legal Options Families May Face
Should Anderson's family pursue civil action, Mississippi's wrongful death statute imposes a strict framework. Under Mississippi Code § 11-7-13, only one wrongful death lawsuit may be brought for a single fatal incident, consolidating all statutory beneficiaries into a single case, and such negligence claims are subject to a three-year statute of limitations, according to the firm Mama Justice. The rule means any surviving family members would need to join a single, unified legal action rather than filing separately.
No further details about the cause of the crash, the condition of Neyland's recovery, or any potential charges had been released at the time of publication.
