Former Blythewood resident Aaron Morrison (left) at this year’s S.C. Press Association awards banquet with Susan Rowell, publisher of The Lancaster News. Morrison, a photographer for The News and former freelance photographer for The Country Chronicle, was critically injured in a car accident earlier this month near Ballantyne, N.C.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Former Blythewood resident Aaron Morrison is recovering from serious injuries he received in a car accident in North Carolina on July 15. He is undergoing rehabilitation at the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte.
Morrison, an award winning staff photographer for The Lancaster News, previously worked as a stringer for The Country Chronicle under its previous ownership from 2004-2005.
The accident occurred in Ballantyne, N.C. when his 2011 Toyota RAV4 was rear-ended by a 2007 BMW driven by Nicholas Michael Borden, 31. Investigators say Borden was driving at a high rate of speed when he first struck another car. That violent impact veered Borden’s BMW into the left lane and into the rear of Morrison’s SUV, the N.C. Highway Patrol said.
Medics responded to the scene and took Morrison by ambulance to Carolinas Medical Center for treatment of life-threatening injuries. The other two drivers sustained non-life threatening injuries. All three were wearing seat belts.
According Morrison’s father, William Morrison, who lives in LongCreek Plantation in Blythewood, Aaron was returning from Ballantyne where he had attended a movie.
“He was just driving down the road going home,” William Morrison said, “when a drunk driver rear-ended him.”
After two weeks in intensive care, Morrison is now in rehabilitation at the hospital’s Neuro Brain Unit, his father said.
“He’s not allowed visitors yet, because that gets to be too much stimulation for him. But he’s conscious now and is slowly making some progress,” William Morrison said. “He was very seriously injured and has a long road of rehab ahead. I spend most of my days here at the rehab center with him.”
Morrison’s father said his son has many friends in the Lancaster community where he works, and that several hundred of them, including the Lancaster government officials, the entire Lancaster News staff and many from churches and schools that Aaron covered on his news photography beat, attended a prayer service for Aaron the Friday night following the accident.
“Even the staff from the town’s Humane Society was there,” William Morrison said with a smile.
“That outpouring of care and comfort for Aaron from his friends meant a lot to our family,” he added, “…the prayers, their presence. It let us know how much he is loved in the community he covers. And that sustains us right now.”
