A Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office report cites the mechanical failure of a go-cart as the likely cause of the fatal accident during last year’s Damariscotta Pumpkinfest parade.
Marvin Tarbox Jr., 59, of Hancock, died in the Oct. 8, 2011 accident.
Tarbox and other members of the Anah Shrine Temple Go-Kart Unit were performing a stunt wherein the carts drive up and over a ramp attached to a moving SUV.
LCSO Sgt. Jason Nein, a crash reconstruction specialist, conducted an exhaustive investigation, including examinations of the go-cart and the SUV, a 1990 GMC Suburban; interviews with about two dozen witnesses and the review of digital photo and video.
Nein, in the report, states his opinion that contact between the go-cart and/or Tarbox with the Suburban’s ramp system resulted in the crash.
“This contact appears to be a mechanical failure of [the cart] as it descended down the ramp,” Nein wrote. “As the leading edge of [the cart] made contact with a cross member of the ramp system [the cart] overturned and crashed.”
“It is unclear why such contact occurred, however, in reviewing video footage of the event, a significant amount of flex, vibration and motion occurs when the ramp is traveled on,” Nein wrote.
Investigators initially suspected the failure of the forward ramp as the cause of the accident. The report, however, indicates that the ramp failed and crashed through the Suburban’s windshield as a result of contact with the go-cart.
“The point where the front section of ramp meets the roof section has a weld on two plates… Upon reviewing video evidence, the weld failed as a result of [the cart’s] contact with a cross member of the ramp,” according to the report.
Tarbox sustained fatal head injuries at the moment of the crash, before two more carts ran into him.
