If it said the car crashed through the divider, doesn't that mean the median between the northbound and southbound lanes?
If someone called 911 with their cell phone in their car, maybe because they glanced in their rear-view mirror and just happened to see a car back behind them a ways starting to lose control and start skidding or careeening, then they told the dispatcher that their own location was somewhere between mile marker 139 and 140, and they were northbound - LE might've been looking along the 5,280 feet of northbound freeway shoulder.
The car would've been on the opposite side of the Interstate from where they were looking. Conversely, if someone saw the car after it had crashed thru the divider - and again, they're in their own car using a cell phone and saw this happen in their rear-view mirror, they might've thought the car had been in their own southbound lane all along, because that's the only side of the road where they had seen them.
See? That makes twice the amount of ground to cover, on both sides, looking for wreckage. Skid marks wouldn't mean anything - there are skid marks all over highways all the time.
LE couldn't possibly have covered all that on foot on the off-chance that the few feet they were searching were actually the correct ones.
Hey R6,
I just said what the family member said. I have no idea what exactly happened...but I am sure it will unfold over the next couple of weeks.
R6,
From what I saw in the video the skidmarks go from the highway across the grass and into the creek...they are plain as day. I don't know how they could have been missed but I have not seen them in person.
From the local reports:
N.C. Department of Transportation workers followed skid marks near the Red Oak exit on northbound I-95 near mile marker 140, then spotted the Guay's white Mazda 3 submerged in a small creek, said 1st Sgt. Keith Stone of the N.C. Highway Patrol.
The car left the road, veered down the bank and ricocheted off a tree before hitting the creek and sinking to the bottom of the 6- to 8-foot deep unnamed body of water. The license plate of the car was barely visible, he said.
"It just happened to go right into the mouth of the creek," Stone said, adding that the time of the crash has not been determined because the cold water helped preserve the bodies. "(But) I wouldn't have any reason to believe it's inconsistent with when they left."
Rocky Mount is about 225 miles from Myrtle Beach or roughly a 3 1/2-hour drive. Stone said speeding does not seem to have been a factor and that it appeared the brakes were tapped slightly before the car left the road.
Wayne Guay appears to have been driving, Stone said, and neither Wayne nor Dianne were wearing a seat belt when the car was removed from the water. The impact with the tree penetrated the driver's side of the car and left a hole about 10 inches in diameter, Stone said.
The Stony Creek Rescue Squad sent a diver into the water to do a preliminary investigation of the scene after the car was found at about 3:30 p.m. The murky water prevented the investigator from determining anything except the doors were closed and all the windows except the front driver's side one were intact, said Rescue Squad Chief Phil Rowe.
and
The State Law Enforcement Division took to the air Monday, and the Guay family hired its own private helicopter through Executive Helicopters Inc. of North Myrtle Beach, to try to locate the couple's white 2003 Mazda.
Shane Duffy, the chief pilot with Executive Helicopters, said he was circling the swamp - about eight miles north of the Rocky Mount, N.C., airport - and spotted the car at about the same time police arrived at 4:30 p.m.
He said he saw tire tracks that looked like a car had slid sideways off the east side of the highway into a 20-foot-wide creek just before a small bridge.
"Exactly how or why would just be a shot in the dark," Duffy said.