-
From King 5.com

SEATTLE -- A man who drove through a barricade went off the lower West Seattle bridge, dropped 80 feet and died as his car hit the ground.

Spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said the turntable bridge had opened for vessel traffic on the Duwamish Waterway and traffic on the bridge was stopped.

Witnesses said the man pulled out of line and crashed through the barrier, sailing through the open gap.

The Jetta fell about 80 feet, landing on its top. "There were three cars that were stopped for the bridge," said Sean Whitcomb, Seattle Police Department spoksman. "This car accelerated and then proceeded to go through an arm that was down and then another metal barrier."

The Vokswagen Jetta landed on its top on the east side of the waterway. The driver died at the scene. He was identified as 39-year-old Kurt A. Struebing.

The Jetta took the barrier with it and the electronics of the bridge were damaged. The bridge is closed to traffic. The opening time is not yet known.

The turntable bridge had opened for vessel traffic on the Duwamish Waterway and traffic on the bridge was stopped.

I didn't know the guy, though he was a frequent contributor to the local Seattle metal forum and seemed like a fairly together cat. Considering his past, it's likely he had more going on inside than most people knew. I won't soil the thread with to much of this kind of talk though... very strange and sad.

Sorry for your loss LE.

--------------------

Well, the guy was apparently reformed...

He had quite an impact on the scene. Look at all the posts about him...
SMO LINK

I dunno...

--------------------

NME Founder KURT STRUEBING Killed In Bridge Crash - Mar. 11, 2005

Hector Castro of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has issued the following report:

When Kurt Struebing (photo) died this week after his car fell through the open draw span of a bridge, it ended a life that friends said seemed to have been lived by two different people.

Nearly 20 years ago, he killed his mother and was sent to prison. Years later, he became a leading figure in heavy-metal music, a trusted friend and a doting father.

On Wednesday (March 9), Struebing, 39, drove his Volkswagen Jetta through two barriers on the Spokane Street Bridge as it opened to let a tug pass on the Duwamish Waterway. The Jetta plunged off the bridge and landed on the ground more than 50 feet below (photo).

Police investigators and motorists who saw the crash were puzzled over why Struebing drove off the bridge.

Friends believe it was simply a horrible accident.

"It's such a loss," said one of them, Lisa Bonner. "It's huge."

Yesterday (March 10), Bonner and several of Struebing's other friends gathered at The Olde Shipwreck tavern on Tacoma's Tideflats for an impromptu benefit to help his family.

"Whatever we can do to make it easier for his family, we will," she said.

Other benefit concerts are expected to follow, she said, which makes sense given Struebing's enormous involvement in the local heavy-metal music scene.

After all, Struebing had in recent years been willing to use his music to help others. Last year, he helped to organize a concert to help the family of a soldier and local musician killed in Iraq. He did the same for another musician who lost his home in a fire.

"He was the go-to guy," Bonner said. "We could call him at any time and ask him for anything, and he would say yes."

Struebing was involved in music for the past two decades, forming a band with some high school buddies in the mid-1980s. By 1986, their band, NME, had released three albums.

But in April of that year, Struebing, then 20, was accused of killing his adoptive mother, Darlee Struebing, with a hatchet and a pair of scissors. At the time, friends said, Struebing had been abusing drugs, and even prosecutors believed he was mentally unstable. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, although prosecutors sought a shorter sentence.

Released early from prison in 1994, it wasn't long before Struebing, a guitarist, began playing music again and the band, NME, reformed.

Critics call their music "black metal." Some music of that genre includes satanic imagery and mentions of the occult. Struebing's band, whose name is pronounced "enemy," had its own Web site: www.nme666.com.

But friends said the music was tongue-in-cheek. "It was just music," said Stephen Austin, who is producer for a heavy-metal program on a cable-access channel.