79-year-old Columbia woman killed in deadly collision on Highway 63 between Harrisburg and Hallsville

A Columbia woman has been killed in a horrific two-vehicle collision on northbound Highway 63, at Highway 124. That’s just south of Heuer’s Country Café.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol’s crash report says the crash happened Tuesday afternoon at about 4 when 79-year-old Joan Broxton tried to enter a median J-turn and traveled into the path of a second vehicle. Troopers say the front of that second vehicle struck the driver’s side of Broxton’s Kia. Broxton was pronounced dead at the scene by the Boone County Coroner. Troopers say a passenger in her vehicle, 76-year-old Robert Larson of Columbia, suffered serious injuries and was transported to University Hospital.

The Patrol says a passenger in the second vehicle, a 37-year-old Kirksville woman, suffered serious injuries.

Area residents have said that intersection has been dangerous for a number of years. Boone County Fire Protection District assistant chief Gale Blomenkamp says he doesn’t have an exact number of fatalities that have happened there in the past five or ten years. But Blomenkamp tells 939 the Eagle that the majority of crashes that the fire department runs there are serious crashes.