One dead after car runs into canal in Gulf Shores

Victim identified as Charles E. Bemis of Summerdale

BY JOHN MULLEN johnm@gulfcoastmedia.com
Posted 10/26/16

GULF SHORES — Dan Doyle lives across the street from the Intracoastal Waterway on Canal Road in Gulf Shores. Sadly, just before 6 a.m. on Oct. 26, he experienced what has become a part of life …

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One dead after car runs into canal in Gulf Shores

Victim identified as Charles E. Bemis of Summerdale

Posted

GULF SHORES — Dan Doyle lives across the street from the Intracoastal Waterway on Canal Road in Gulf Shores. Sadly, just before 6 a.m. on Oct. 26, he experienced what has become a part of life there.

“Annually I see about one person per year die in this canal,” Doyle said from his front yard.

On Oct. 26 white male died after the vehicle they were driving west on Canal Road left the roadway and ended up in the Intracoastal Waterway. The car was eventually pulled from the water just before 10 a.m. through the efforts of the Gulf Shores Police Dive Team and a marine unit from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.

Police later identified the dead man as 76-year-old Charles E. Bemis of Summerdale.

This accident was just a few hundred yards west of the spot where Timothy Holley died after his car ran off into the canal on Oct. 1, 2015.

Doyle and neighbors were talking over coffee in his front yard as emergency crews were working to retrieve the car from the water.

“It happened about a quarter to six,” Doyle said. “The guy either had a heart attack or something and ran off the road.”

Soon first responders were on the scene and on the vehicle, Doyle said.

“It floated for about 15 or 20 minutes,” he said. “There were trying to get the windows knocked out of it and they couldn’t get the doors open. They never got him out. He’s still in the vehicle and it slowly sank to the bottom.”

One of the responders, Doyle said, even got on the hood of the black sedan trying to bust through the windshield.

The responders to the scene got airbags attached to the vehicle and floated it out into the center of the canal. There it was attached to an Alabama State Troopers boat and slowly pulled eastward to the state’s boat launch on the north side of the canal.

There, after waiting for officials from the coroner’s office, the black Nissan four-door was pulled from the water and up the ramp by a tow truck.