Faulty school crossing signal causes concern

Parents are upset with a local school after officials fail to notice a broken school crossing signal on a busy street. 

Eyewitness News first discovered the malfunctioning light on Catawba Avenue in Cornelius in November 2009, after concerned parents noticed it stopped flashing multiple times.

The signal warns drivers to slow down to 20 miles an hour in front of Cornelius Elementary School. Public works officials blamed the problem on a solar panel, and promised the issue would be fixed.  But over two years later, it was again an Eyewitness News crew, driving by the signal on Catawba Avenue, that noticed the flashing light had stopped working again.

Neither school officials nor Cornelius police were aware of the broken signal, and could not say how long the light had been out.

An electric crew came to work on the signal Thursday afternoon, and appeared to fix the problem.
But our crew noticed that just a few minutes after school dismissal, the light had once again gone dark.

"Somebody will come through here and not stop, and somebody will get hit," said Tiffany Davis, a parent of a Cornelius student.

Another parent said it should have been school officials - -- not a news crew - -- that noticed the signal was broken.

"That's terrible… this is a very good community and we walk a lot, so yeah it does concern me," said mom Samantha Milbe.

After the second outage, we again notified school officials and police.

The Public Works director promised to check out the light before school on Friday morning, and ensure it was functioning correctly.