A 12-year-old boy injured in a motorcycle accident in Columbus this weekend has died.
Kobe Bryant Strickland died Tuesday at University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, according to Lowndes County Coroner Greg Merchant.
Strickland and his father, 41-year-old John Bryant, were involved in a crash along Highway 12 East on Saturday. Bryant and Strickland were riding Bryant’s 2012 Harley Davidson motorcycle when it hit another vehicle turning off the road near the Nissan dealership, Merchant said. The accident occurred about 2:30 p.m.
Bryant was pronounced dead after being transported to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle. Strickland, his youngest son, was airlifted to the hospital in Jackson, where he was pronounced dead Tuesday.
The other vehicle’s driver went to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle with non-life-threatening injuries, according to Merchant.
Bryant had picked his son up earlier in the day, and they were heading home to Caledonia to celebrate Christmas over the weekend, according to Barbara Bryant, the mother of John Bryant.
Barbara Bryant and her husband were driving from Columbus to Branson, Missouri, on Saturday for a vacation. When they reached Memphis, she received a phone call about the wreck. The couple turned around and drove home, she said.
“I just don’t know what happened,” Barbara Bryant told The Dispatch on Tuesday evening.
The Columbus Police Department is investigation the accident. As of this morning, the department had not responded to messages from The Dispatch asking for the crash’s specifics.
John Bryant had worked at what is now Steel Dynamics in Lowndes County for seven-plus years. He worked in the mill’s melt shop. Phillip Padlan, one of his co-workers, described Bryant as an “absolute family man” and a “fun-loving, good guy.”
“He would walk into a room and no matter the mood, people would be laughing by the time he left,” Padlan said. “He never met a stranger.”
Bryant’s mother agreed. She said her youngest son was “there for anybody who needed him.”
Nina Steenstra, an administrative assistant in the department where Bryant worked, said she would never forget Bryant’s smile.
“Whenever you had a conversation with John, when you walked away you felt better than you did before it began –about everything,” Steenstra said.
She described the employees of the department where Bryant worked as a “family.”
“We’re going to support John’s family for as long as they need us,” she added.
Bryant and his wife, Brandy Ray Bryant, had celebrated their second wedding anniversary earlier this fall. They had two other children.
Bryant, who was a graduate of Caldwell High School and veteran of the U.S. Navy, “loved riding” motorcycles, Padlan said. The Harley Davidson he was riding Saturday was one of two he had.
Barbara Bryant said that above all, her son would appreciate the outpouring of support his friends have shown his family since Saturday’s crash.
“He’s never going to be forgotten,” Padlan, who will serve as a pallbearer at Bryant’s funeral today, said. “He’s still going to be with us. His spirit will live through us.”
John Bryant’s funeral is scheduled for 6 p.m. today at Lowndes Funeral Home Chapel. As of press time today, The Dispatch had not received funeral arrangement information for Kobe Bryant Strickland.
William Browning was managing editor for The Dispatch until June 2016.
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