10-year-old and mom die after family’s car collides with tractor-trailer, NC cops say

A 10-year-old and his mother died after their car collided with a tractor-trailer in North Carolina, officials said.

The child’s dad also was flown to a Charlotte hospital after the crash on Monday, Aug. 8, according to N.C. State Highway Patrol.

State troopers said the mom was behind the wheel when she was turning out of a parking lot in Lincoln County. As she entered N.C. Highway 27, she pulled “into the path of the tractor-trailer,” state troopers told McClatchy News in an email.

The mother, identified in a news release as 54-year-old Belinda Shrewsbury Baker, died at the scene of the crash.

Her son, 10-year-old Michael Paul Baker, had been in the back seat of the car. He was rushed to a hospital and later died, officials said.

The woman’s husband was also in the car at the time of the crash. He was taken to Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center with serious injuries, according to highway patrol.

Officials said the Bakers were all wearing seat belts. The family is from Vale, a Lincoln County community roughly 50 miles northwest of Charlotte.

The tractor-trailer driver suffered minor injuries in the crash. That person’s truck belonged to the N.C. Forest Service, state troopers wrote in their news release.

Charges aren’t expected after the crash, which was reported at about 2:15 p.m. near Asbury Church Road. The incident closed a stretch of N.C. 27 for roughly two hours, investigators said.

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