A 17-year-old Clinton resident was killed Friday in a head-on collision on U.S. 421 when her vehicle crossed the center line and struck a tractor-trailer. The investigation is ongoing into the deadly wreck, the third on Sampson County roadways in less than a week.

According to reports, Friday’s fatal collision occured at 10:47 a.m. Friday on U.S. 421, approximately 1.4 miles north of Clinton, near the intersection with Browns Church Road. Ashley Nicole Lane, 17, of Roanoke Road, Clinton, was reportedly “killed instantly” in the wreck.

Lane, who was just a few weeks shy of her 18th birthday, had just graduated from Sampson Early College High School last week.

Investigation from N.C. Highway Patrol Trooper W.A. Davis revealed that a 2019 Kenworth tractor-trailer loaded with feeder pigs was traveling north on U.S. 421, when a 2017 Chevrolet Traverse traveling south crossed the centerline and struck the tractor-trailer head-on in the northbound lane. The Traverse was being driven by Lane.

After impact, the tractor-trailer ran off the right side of the road and struck a ditch. Lane’s vehicle came to rest off the left side of the roadway in a private drive. Lane was restrained and airbags were deployed in her vehicle. The driver of the tractor-trailer, Joseph Gregory Fisher Jr., 50, of Roseboro, was also restrained and not injured.

“The investigation is still ongoing to determine why Lane traveled left of center,” Sgt. D. Kevin Pearson stated.

Lane’s death was the third on county roadways since last Saturday, May 29, when a wreck on N.C. 24 claimed the life of a Clinton teenager, who was reportedly one of several teens in a vehicle that overturned and careened through a fence in a single-vehicle collision.

Just days later, on Tuesday, a separate fatal collision in Sampson, this one on U.S. 13, claimed the life of a Four Oaks man when a Lowe’s truck driver ran a stop sign at Alex

Charges were leveled in both of those wrecks, a teenage driver in the May 29 wreck and a Lowe’s truck driver who reportedly failed to stop at a stop sign in the Tuesday collision, according to Highway Patrol authorities in Sampson.