Easley Man Dies In Tractor Accident

By Melissa Keeney

Pickens County Apr. 17, 2008

An Easley man died Wednesday in a tragic tractor accident.  The coroner’s office identified the man as 46 year old Perry Leslie.  The accident happened off Rolling Green Road in Pickens County, the same property Kevin Nation’s family has owned for three generations.  In that time, he’s seen plenty of problems.  “There’s nothing safe about it sometimes. Anything can happen.”

Nations got a phone call Thursday afternoon about the accident.  The caller thought Nations might be the one hurt.  “I came straight out here,” he says.  Nations says Leslie and his brother had been working on the land all week.  They were clearing some brush on the side of dam when something went terribly wrong.  The two brothers were using a cable to hoist a small tractor up a hill.  The larger tractor, that Perry Leslie was operating, got stuck and flipped over, crushing him underneath.  “He got a little too close to the edge, and somehow, something went haywire,” Nations says.

He says something like this can happen every day, but Leslie knew what he was doing.  “They’ve been doing it all their life.  It’s nothing they started just a week ago.  They’re experienced with it.”