BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY--A man shot to death on the parkway this week in a possible road rage incident marks the fifth fatality in the national park site so far this year.
Parkway Chief Ranger Neal Labrie told The Roanoke Times that two men were driving on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Roanoke’s Explore Park at Milepost 116 on Tuesday morning when the shooting happened. Labrie says one person “presented a weapon and the other responded with shooting.”
A suspect, 56-year-old Keith Sidwell, is being held by authorities. Labrie said Sidwell reported the shooting. No charges have been reported, and it’s unclear whether he has a lawyer.
The victim’s name is being withheld until family can be notified, said Brian McGinn, spokesman with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Virginia. The office is working with the FBI and the National Park Service in close consultation with the Roanoke County Police Department and the Roanoke County Commonwealth’s Attorney.
Sidwell is a former Roanoke police officer and former police chief in Henderson, North Carolina, where he retired in 2013, according to the Roanoke Times.
The parkway is the most visited unit in the National Park Service, with some 16.2 million visitors in 2017. It stretches 469 miles from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia to Cherokee, at the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is spread about equally between the two states.
On April 2, a 25-year-old man died after driving off the parkway near the Craggy Gardens Visitor Center, about 20 miles northeast of Asheville.
Parkway chief ranger Neal Labrie said the wreck, which was reported shortly after 8 p.m., was a suicide. The driver was headed north on the parkway when he drove off an embankment at Milepost 364. The car came to rest in a thicket of trees 250 feet beneath the roadway and was later removed by crane.
Labrie said there are 350-360 wrecks along the parkway each year. Last year, there were four motor vehicle accidents that resulted in fatalities, one death from an accidental fall at an overlook in Haywood County, and eight suicides.
So far this year there have been five fatalities, including one motor vehicle accident, one death from exposure, two suicides and one homicide.
In the exposure death, Ralph Brady, 55, was found dead on the parkway in the Waterrock Knob area of Jackson County on March 3. He was dropped off by his girlfriend on March 2 to search for ramps outside the parkway boundary. But when he did not return on time, she called 911.
Brandon said Brady might have died due to complications from diabetes and exposure to the sub-zero temperatures that night. He had not planned to spend the night outdoors and did not have camping gear with him. Temperatures in the area that evening were approximately 17 degrees with high winds.
