A man was killed Tuesday when he crashed the motorcycle he was riding on Highway 82 West near the 18th Avenue exit in Columbus shortly before 5:30 p.m.
Lowndes County Coroner Greg Merchant identified the victim as Duane Alan Childers, 51, of Marion, Mississippi. The cause of death was multiple trauma, Merchant said. There will be no autopsy.
The motorcycle was westbound when it veered off the highway, hitting the concrete wall of the bridge and sliding along it about 40 feet, before hitting the guardrail and flying into a sign by the road, City Public Information Officer Joe Dillon said. The rider hit one of the legs of the sign, which caused his injuries, and then came to rest about 35 feet away.
The motorcycle fell about 200 feet into a ditch behind doctors’ offices off Brookmoore Drive, where it started a grass fire.
Columbus Police Department and an ambulance from Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle arrived on the scene, while firefighters from Columbus Fire and Rescue put out the grass fire. Childers was declared dead at the scene.
Childers is originally from Irontown, Ohio, and was living in Marion while he worked in Meridian, Merchant said. Both his drivers license and his tag were from Ohio.
Witnesses told police Childers had not been driving recklessly but did say he was slumped over the handlebars as though he may have been suffering from a medical condition.
Dillon said the sun was “perfectly in the wrong place” coming over the sign and that if Childers hadn’t known the area well, he may not have realized the highway curved there.
Photographer Luisa Porter contributed to this report.
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