This news story originally provided by The Lexington Herald Leader

March 20, 2005

An ex-miner, but still killed by coal

MINISTER'S DEATH IN CRASH ILLUSTRATES DANGERS OF OVERLOADED TRUCKS

By Lee Mueller
EASTERN KENTUCKY BUREAU

INEZ - The new sign outside the Rev. Lonnie Preece's small white church on Coldwater Fork contains one of his favorite admonitions: "How Far Away is Heaven? One Breath Away!"

On the last day of his life, Preece climbed into his new 2005 GMC Sierra truck and made his usual Monday morning rounds. He picked up garbage from nearby relatives and hauled it to Martin County's collection center, about four miles away on Ky. 40, just west of Inez.

At the transfer station, as locals call it, Preece chatted amiably with other residents waiting to fling bags of weekend waste into a large steel bin.

"Lonnie always was a good person," said Troy Mollett, the station's manager.

Then Preece, 55, pastor of the Bethel United Baptist Church, headed back home on Ky. 40. Less than a mile from his house, he passed a BP station where cashier Dennis Stacy was cleaning out a stall in the car wash.

Stacy, who said Preece had baptized his brother-in-law, never saw the preacher's eastbound pickup, but heard the impact, about 100 yards up the road. Charles Wiley Jr., 27, driving an overloaded, westbound coal truck, had swerved suddenly into Preece's lane and collided head-on with his pickup.

Stacy didn't even look up.

It was a solid, familiar sound, not unlike the metal bang of an empty aluminum truck bed when a coal hauler hits a pothole. The bed bounces up and falls down -- "Like, 'ker-thump!'" he said -- and the 18-wheel tractor-trailer rolls on down the road.

This time it didn't.

Because the March 7 tragedy involved an overweight truck, however, the crash echoed loudly in Frankfort, 165 miles away.

On that very day, lawmakers were to vote on a controversial House bill that would have unleashed new fleets of heavy trucks hauling taxable "natural resources" on Kentucky's highways. Opponents of the bill deplored the wreck, which might have helped defeat the proposal -- at least temporarily.

The 2005 legislative session resumes Monday, when a House member could try to revive the bill.

"I don't know if it did (help defeat House Bill 8) or not," said state Rep. Howard Cornett, R-Whitesburg, the legislation's sponsor. "There were some people who stood on the floor and talked about it. It may have."

If Preece's death influenced some legislators to change their votes on HB 8 and maybe help save lives, family members say he would be pleased.

"Tickled to death," said Ronnie Caldwell, a son-in-law who works for a Prestonsburg bank.

"You had to have known Lonnie," said Diane Smith of Inez, a niece. "He was a very good preacher, but he was a great man."

Two families in pain

One of 12 children, Preece was the son of former Martin County school board member Howard Preece, who also had been pastor of the Bethel United Baptist Church, which a sign says was established in 1856.

"Somebody in his family has always been part of this church," said Bill Slone, a deacon at the church who retired as county school superintendent this year. "The pew we sit in was made by his great-grandfather."

Slone and Preece both graduated from Inez High School in 1967. Preece married Doris Proctor of Man, W.Va., about 35 years ago, and they had three grown children, he said, including a Martin County grade-school teacher, Michelle Caldwell. Another daughter, Shannon Maynard, is married to Inez optometrist Todd Maynard and is expecting their first child. A son, Devin, married last summer and is living in Georgetown.

Preece retired from Excel Mining last year after more than 20 years with the company, Caldwell said. Family members said Preece "accepted Jesus" in 1988 and became an ordained minister in 1992. His twin brother, Donnie, also a retired miner, lives across the road. He made news locally last year when a bear raided his beehives, Smith said.

"It's a fine family," Slone said. "Lonnie was one of those people whose good opinion I valued. This is a terrible loss to the community."

Both Preece's widow and his brother, grief-stricken, declined to be interviewed.

The family is still in shock, said Caldwell, the son-in-law. "Working in the mines all those years, you would have thought once he got out, all of his danger was over with," he said. "We just hate to think, with the weight of these trucks going unnoticed, of another family having to go through something like this."

Court documents show that Charles Wiley Jr. was driving for Hall Trucking of Inez, which was contracted to haul coal for Appalachian Fuels of Ashland from Hardy in Pike County to the river barge docks near Catlettsburg on the Big Sandy River.

Wiley, who has been making the trip twice a day for two years, lives in a small trailer in Inez with a friend.

Barefoot and shirtless, he paced the room, past a large-screen TV, and leaned heavily on a kitchen table, exhaling deeply.

"Buddy, I ain't slept for a week," he said. "I mean, I never even bent the bumper on a truck before. I know it wasn't my fault, but you can't help feeling guilty."

Wiley's father died four months ago of a heart attack and his mother died of cancer a year ago. "And now this. It's a nightmare for everybody," said his aunt, Tina Wiley.

"That poor man's family, I know they're going though hard times," she said of the Preeces. "But they just don't realize what Junior's going though, too."

Wiley was cited after the accident for hauling 150,150 pounds of coal on a highway with a 62,000 pound limit. Even though he was 88,150 pounds overweight on Ky. 40, the coal was still a foot below the top of the bed, he said.

The coal company had loaded his truck and he did not know how much weight he was hauling, he added.

Appalachian Fuels official Carl Simmons in Ashland did not return a phone call seeking comment.

When he started around a small curve and came up behind two vehicles that were stopped in the road, Wiley said he was doing 32 miles an hour and was alert. The car in front, a Martin County water district truck, was making a left turn, left-turn signal blinking, witnesses said.

Wiley said he could not see the truck's turn signal, and the car behind it did not have its signal on. (In Kentucky, drivers behind turning vehicles no longer are required to give the same signal, said Cornett, the legislator. )

"By the time I seen it, it was too late," Wiley said.

No skid marks were reported at the scene, but Wiley said air brakes and anti-lock brakes often do not leave skid marks.

"I hit my brakes. I sure did," he said. "I had that pedal to the floor. I swerved to miss the car and hit the pickup. It just happened so quick, you didn't have any time to think about it."

No more truck driving

Martin County Deputy Sheriff Kirby Preece, the first law-enforcement officer to reach the wreck, said witnesses told him Wiley was driving at a "reasonable" speed in the 45 mph zone.

"He took evasive action," said Preece, a distant cousin of the victim. "Your natural tendency would be to go to the left," he said, holding out his hands and turning an imaginary steering wheel to the left.

The deputy said there was not enough room between the hillside and vehicles in front for the coal truck to get past them on the right.

"If he'd done that, that coal truck probably would have toppled on both vehicles," he said.

Wiley said he didn't see the pickup coming when he swerved, but conceded the extra weight might have prevented him from stopping more quickly.

No additional charges have been made against Wiley, although Crum, the state police detective, said he will turn the results of his investigation over to the local commonwealth's attorney, Anna Melvin.

Melvin's office could not be reached for comment.

Driving a gravel truck for a road contractor is not an alternative, Wiley said, especially if the legislature winds up raising the weight limits for gravel trucks from 80,000 to 126,500 pounds -- the same as it is now for 18-wheel coal trucks on four-lane highways.

"Weight's weight," Wiley said. "They'll still be just as hard to stop."

Meanwhile, Wiley said he plans to give up truck driving and hopes to land a job at a Wal-Mart in Paintsville.

Working at Wal-Mart, he said, "would sure be safer than driving a truck, buddy."