thedailytimes.com : Your 24/7 news source

The treacherous curves of the Dragon claimed two more lives Friday as a pair of people from Florida were killed in a wreck that closed the road for more than three hours.
It was the second fatal accident on the road in two days.
A man and a woman were riding on a three-wheeled Honda motorcycle, known as a trike, when they apparently took a curve of northbound Calderwood Highway (U.S. 129, commonly known as the Dragon) too quickly and lost control, said Tennessee Highway Patrol Trooper Ernest Marion.
The pair then hit a Toyota Land Cruiser with a large boat on a trailer driven by John Stanley Hitch, 53, Maryville, that was coming up the hill in the southbound lane. The accident took place between Mile Markers 2 and 3 on Calder-
wood Highway.
The impact was so severe that it nearly knocked the 5,000-pound boat completely off the trailer. The couple on the trike were trapped under the boat and trailer after the accident.
The name of the pair was not released Friday pending notification of their family members.
Another motorcycle rider, Bret Akers, 45, Lincolnton, N.C., wrecked when he hit the overturned trike. He was injured, but refused treatment, Marion said.
Speed was a factor in the accident, he said.
Agee Lequire, Philadelphia, was driving a truck with a horse trailer just seconds behind the trike on northbound Calderwood Highway. The accident had happened moments before when he pulled up and Hitch flagged him down.
Lequire said he tried to assist the two riders of the Honda trike, but when he got to them under the trailer and boat, it was too late.
“(The wreck) was too much,” he said. “There’s just nothing you can do to help someone in that kind of condition.”
Cell phone coverage in the area is spotty at best, and Lequire could not get a signal to call 911. Of the other motorists at the scene of the accident, someone was finally to get through and contacted emergency personnel at 5:59 p.m.
Once on the scene, it took emergency personnel and tow truck workers more than an hour to move the boat and other debris enough to remove the bodies of the victims from the scene.
Along with THP, Blount County Sheriff’s Office, Blount County Volunteer Rescue Squad, Rural/Metro Ambulance Service and an ambulance from Graham County, N.C., responded to the accident.
Thursday victim ID’d
Friday’s accident followed by one day the fatal accident that involved a motorcycle rider from Michigan losing control of his bike on a curve on the Dragon and sliding to his death over an 80-foot cliff.
The man killed in the motorcycle wreck at 6:52 p.m. Thursday on Calderwood Highway was identified by authorities Friday as Kevin James Hoyt, 40, Highland, Mich.
According to the Tennessee Highway Patrol accident report, Hoyt was southbound on the highway when he lost control in a curve and slid down an embankment.
He “low sided” his bike by applying too much braking pressure on the front wheel while taking the curve, according to Trooper Marion, who also responded to that wreck.
Hoyt then slid with the bike over the edge of the highway, down an 80-foot cliff and landed on a small ledge in a heavily wooded area off the side of the road.
His black 2005 Yamaha motorcycle continued on for another 15 feet before coming to rest 95 feet below the road.
The accident happened about seven miles from the North Carolina line. The 11-mile-long Dragon runs from Tab Cat Creek to Deal’s Gap in North Carolina.
Friday’s accident brings the number of traffic fatalities in Blount County for 2007 to 17. By this time in 2006 Blount County had only had nine traffic fatalities.