WINTON – The new year’s second traffic fatality in the local area occurred near here in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Christopher Alan Grimes, 23, of Union died at the scene of a single-vehicle accident on US 13 just north of the Chowan River bridge in Gates County near Powell Road. Grimes was a member of the Union Volunteer Fire Department.

According to a report filed by North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper J.S. Archer, Grimes was operating a 2007 Ford pick-up truck northbound on US 13 at the time of the accident, which occurred at 12:55 a.m.

The accident investigation revealed that the truck went left of center at which time Trooper Archer believes that Grimes overcorrected, causing the vehicle to travel off the right side of the highway where it first struck a metal fence before impacting a tree at the driver’s side door. The truck came to rest at that point.

Archer’s report showed that Grimes was wearing a seat belt.

The accident remains under investigation, but preliminary information shows that speed was a contributing factor.

The fatality was the second of 2011, and the first in Gates County, within the NCHP’s Troop A, Division II territory, which covers Bertie, Gates and Hertford counties.