Truck driver charged in fatality

Published 4:48 pm Monday, November 5, 2018

The truck driver involved in the fatality of an East Side volunteer firefighter has been charged with misdemeanor death by vehicle.

Aberdeen police recently served warrants on Matthew Arrington, four months after he caused a crash that killed 17-year-old Dakota Ross Snavely.

Arrington was also charged with improper loading/covering a load and driving left of center, records show.

Snavely was killed June 10 on N.C. Highway 205 south of Oakboro. Arrington was traveling southbound in a tractor trailer hauling chickens when he crossed the centerline in a curve and lost his load, which struck a northbound Snavely.

At the time of the crash Snavely was responding to a water rescue at Morrow Mountain State Park as part of the East Side Volunteer Fire Department.

When Snavely did not show for the dispatched emergency, his father, a captain with the VFD, later drove the route his son would have taken before arriving at the scene of the fatality.