By Rupert Howell
One is dead and four injured Monday morning when one car was T-boned at the Highway 6 and Eureka Street intersection in Batesville at approximately 9:45 a.m.
According to Panola County Coroner Gracie Grant-Gulledge, Bobby Gene Cook, 69, of Batesville died following the accident. It was unknown at press time whether Cook was a driver or passenger.
Three other wreck victims were transported to Memphis hospitals but their conditions were unknown at press time.
Three ambulances and two helicopters (one could not safely land) responded to the multi-car accident that had emergency medical technicians, policemen and firemen working over the victims and wreckage for a couple of hours according to local business owner Ricky Swindle whose family tire store is located at that intersection’s corner.
“It’s the worst wreck I’ve seen since I’ve been here. I’ve been here since I was 10 years old,” he said while figuring that covered a period of 42 years.
Swindle said he and his co-workers heard the crash although they didn’t see the actual wreck.
Batesville Police Department confirmed an accident at 9:36 a.m. at Highway 6 and Eureka Street involving three vehicles with entrapment.  One person was flown by Air Evac from the scene, four were transported to Merit Health by ambulance  and one fatality was reported. The accident is currently still under investigation according to the BPD press release.
Swindle and others had high praise for emergency responders stating they worked hard.
But he didn’t praise “rubber-neckers” who continued to pull up and park in his parking lot while he and co-workers were trying to clear the area for the second helicopter to land.
“We’d move two cars out and five more would pull in, park, take their keys and walk toward the wreck,” he said, adding, “It’s the most asinine thing I’ve ever seen. Just ignorant.”
Swindle said the scene reminded him of Springfest with people from every walk of life walking around seeing what had happened.
“Lord, at the people that would pull up and park their car wherever—like going to some kind of event. It was a mess—they’d walk right up to the scene.”
Ironically, while Swindle and others lauded the response of ambulance services and their EMTs, Panola supervisors were grilling the county’s contract ambulance service officials with Med Stat over response times in the county and ambulance availability during a meeting in Sardis.
Med Stat’s operation manager David Eldridge informed supervisors that three of four ambulances dedicated to Panola were at that time in service at the Batesville wreck.