Passenger dies after I-71 wreck

A 25-year-old man has died after a car in which he was a passenger crashed on Interstate 71 near Interstate 270 on the city’s North Side.

James Lee III, 25, was pronounced dead at OhioHealth Grant Medical Center on Thursday.

He was a passenger in the back seat of a 2007 BMW driven by Kervens Felix, 23. Felix was southbound on I-71 at 12:45 a.m. Thursday when he lost control of the car and it ran off the left side of the road and hit the median wall. The car bounced back across the southbound lanes and ran off the right side of the road, went up the embankment of the I-270 bridge and struck its underside.

Felix, Lee and Woodney Lochard, 21, were taken to Grant in critical condition. The investigation is ongoing. Lee’s death was the city’s 24th traffic-related fatality this year.