An Avery County volunteer firefighter will give up his license for at least six months after pleading guilty to a charge that resulted from a street racing triple-fatality crash involving two Blowing Rock volunteer firefighters returning from a training session in March 2010.
The third victim, a passenger in the vehicle hit by the car carrying the two Blowing Rock firefighters, died in a hospital 11 days after the collision.
Tyler Jordan Vance, 18, of Elk Park pleaded guilty in McDowell County District Court to speed competition. As part of a plea arrangement with the state, prosecutors dismissed a charge of misdemeanor death by vehicle.
Judge Tommy Davis gave Vance a 30-day suspended jail sentence and placed him on supervised probation for 12 months. Vance was ordered to pay court costs, surrender his license for at least six months and perform 100 hours of community service at a location other than his fire department.
The collision occurred during heavy rains as people were leaving McDowell’s 2010 Fire & Rescue College. Trooper Tommy Brewer of the N.C. Highway Patrol said shortly afterward that the collision involved a race between a Mustang carrying two Blowing Rock volunteer firefighters and a Camaro carrying two 17-year-old Avery County junior volunteer firefighters in which speeds approached 95 miles an hour.
Vance, who was 17 at the time, was the driver of the Camaro, according to the trooper.
The 2008 Ford Mustang driven by Jeremy Gordon Bolick, 23, of Lenoir went out of control on U.S. 221 North in Marion about 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 21, 2010. The Mustang started spinning across the five-lane highway and collided with an oncoming vehicle, according to the Highway Patrol.
Bolick and his passenger, Charles Thomas Wright, 20, of Blowing Rock were killed in the collision as the Mustang slammed sideways into a 2006 Chrysler driven by Cynthia White Bassett, 51, who lives part time in Marion and part time in Flagler Beach, Fla.
Her husband, Jeffrey Wilkes Bassett, 51, died in Asheville’s Memorial Mission Hospital 11 days after the crash. Cynthia was released after more than three weeks in the hospital.
