Details emerge in deadly nighttime fishing boat crash on Lake Tobesofkee
A late-night boat crash that killed a Macon fisherman on Lake Tobesofkee last week may have happened when the drivers of both boats involved swerved at the last instant to avoid each other but instead turned in the same direction and collided.
There were two men on each boat and one of the men on each was thrown in the water upon impact, according to a preliminary overview of the July 1 wreck in a Bibb County sheriff’s report.
Christopher Robert “Chris” King, who was a passenger on a 2013 Triton TR21, had on a life vest but couldn’t be revived after he was pulled from the lake, the report said, adding that his cause of death was “believed to be drowning.”
The driver of the other boat, Mickey E. Claxton, 48, of Monroe County, was knocked out of his 2007 Ranger 188VS in the 10:25 p.m. crash. His son helped him back aboard.
The driver of the boat King was in, Charles Michael Taylor, 32, of Macon, described the wreck, saying his boat was “struck in the side” by the other vessel — “T-boned,” as the report put it — causing King “to be ejected.”
“(Taylor) said that King was wearing a life jacket when he was ejected and that he was able to get (King) back on a boat where someone performed CPR on King until they could get him to an ambulance,” the report said.
King worked as a safety manager at Robins Air Force Base and had for two decades been president of a local bass-fishing club, his obituary said.
Claxton, the driver of the other boat, told sheriff’s deputies that he was cruising west from the lake’s main recreation area, Claystone Park, toward Sandy Beach, the next prominent point up the lake, shortly before 10:30 p.m. The area is in the mouth of a cove that opens up to the south from a bridge at Moseley Dixon Road.
According to the report, Claxton said that as he headed toward Sandy Beach, the other boat “came around a corner. ... He said that in an attempt to avoid a head-on crash with (the other vessel), he pulled the boat’s accelerator back to slow down and made a left turn, and that (the other boat) appeared to also pull his accelerator back and made a left turn as well. Mr. Claxton said that he was unable to avoid crashing into (the other boat) and that he was ejected from the boat on impact.”
The report said Claxton also mentioned later hearing Taylor, the other boat’s driver, “yelling for King and that upon finding King in the water” that Claxton “began CPR on King until they could get him to the shore and on an ambulance.”
The wreck remains under investigation.