A Georgia father whose teenage daughter died in a car accident off a bridge last month was arrested Sunday for building barricades in order to make the bridge safer, NBC 11 reported.
"The reason I was out there yesterday is because it's been 30 days and there hasn't been a thing done," Shannon Hamilton, the teen's father, told the station on Monday.
Hamilton's woes began March 15 when his 16-year-old daughter Cecily died when the car she was riding in swerved off a bridge in White County and fell into the water below.
The bridge in question, on Gene Nix Road, reportedly had no barricades. So a Change.org petition was started to get White County Commissioners to have guardrails installed.
Thousands of people signed the petition and county officials approved the request. But after two weeks, the bridge was still without barricades. So Hamilton decided to take action to prevent another tragic loss.
"I pleaded with them to...put some concrete barriers up, some kind of temporary safety measure in place to prevent another father to have to walk across that bridge and identify their baby girl on the other side," Hamilton told NBC 11.
On Sunday Hamilton was arrested as he attempted to make the repairs himself. Wayne County Sheriff's deputies cuffed and hauled him off on charges of interference with government property. The arrested was purportedly recorded by Hamilton's son, Kale, and posted on his Facebook page.
The district attorney said he will take into consideration what happened to Hamilton's family when pursuing the case.
As for the guardrails, county officials said engineers recommended making a permanent fix to the bridge instead of something temporary.
"I think it's moved very quickly," White County Manager Mike Melton told NBC 11. "We immediately hired an engineer and he's done a study and he'll have that this week and be able to start construction hopefully in the next week or two."
