One Killed in Auto Crash

One person was killed and another injured in a two-car accident on Ringgold Road, Saturday evening.

According to ERPD Chief Clint Uselton, the accident happened just before 8 p.m. in the 3800 block of Ringgold Road. The crash was a couple hundred feet west of the red light at Ringgold Road and Kingwood Drive. One vehicle involved in the collision had rolled over trapping two occupants inside. One of the occupants, 39-year-old Christopher E. Cowart of Walker County, Georgia, was killed in the crash, while the other was taken to an area hospital.

The East Ridge Police Department and the Tennessee Highway Patrol are investigating the circumstances which led to the crash. When asked if speed was a contributing factor in the accident, Chief Uselton said he wouldn’t comment until he spoke with traffic investigators.

The crash snarled traffic on the main commercial corridor until after midnight.

About Dick Cook

Dick Cook has lived in East Ridge since the Kennedy Administration when his parents bought a house on Marietta Street. Dick graduated from ERHS in 1976 before going on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga where he studied Political Science. Dick worked for the Chattanooga Free-Press and the Chattanooga Times Free Press for 22 years. Free-Press Sports Editor Roy Exum plucked him out of production in 1989 and gave him a job as a sports reporter. Dick covered everything from prep sports to the whitewater events on the Ocoee River for the 1996 Olympics. When Chattanooga's two paper's merged, he became the Crime Reporter covering both the Chattanooga Police and Fire Departments. He was among reporters who were honored by the Associated Press for the TFP's coverage of the 2002 fog-shrouded crash on I-75 in Catoosa County, Dick and his wife, Cathy, live on Marlboro Avenue where they are seen frequently chasing around their three grandsons.