Man Killed in Perry County Crash Identified as David Baisden

David Baisden, a 36-year-old man from Hazard, is dead, and the Kentucky State Police say the questions that matter most — why a Jeep crossed into his lane, and whether anything in his system or the other driver’s played a role — remain unanswered as of Wednesday. The collision on KY-80 in the Bulan community of Perry County killed him at the scene Tuesday evening, and it has left a corridor of Appalachian Kentucky asking how a routine drive home became a fatal one, Kentucky State Police reported.

At approximately 5:34 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, troopers from KSP Post 13 in Hazard responded to a call about a two-vehicle collision on KY-80 in Bulan, a small community in Perry County. Medical personnel went to the scene alongside them. Baisden was pronounced deceased there by the Perry County Coroner’s Office. The other driver survived.

A Jeep crossed the median into the westbound lane

According to the preliminary investigation, a 2023 Jeep Wrangler was traveling eastbound on KY-80 when it crossed the raised median and entered the westbound lane, striking a 2015 Ford Mustang operated by Baisden. LEX18, which independently reported the crash, put the time slightly earlier, at around 5:30 p.m., but confirmed the same sequence: the Jeep went into the oncoming lane and hit the Mustang.

The driver of the Jeep was transported by Perry County EMS to Hazard A.R.H., where he was treated for non-life-threatening injuries. Seat belts were in use in both vehicles when the crash occurred, a point investigators highlighted. The incident shows how fast a median crossing can kill even when drivers are buckled up.

What caused the Jeep to leave its lane is not yet known. That is the central open question in the case.

Toxicology pending as Trooper Charles Moore reconstructs the scene

The investigation remains active. An autopsy of Baisden has been scheduled, and toxicology testing is pending, according to KSP. The crash is being reconstructed by Trooper Charles Moore, a detail that signals the agency is treating the incident as a full investigation rather than a routine traffic fatality.

For Perry County, the loss lands in a community where KY-80 is a daily artery — the road that connects Hazard to the smaller communities scattered through the county’s hollers and ridges. Bulan sits along that route, and a crash at 5:34 p.m. on a November evening means the road was carrying ordinary evening traffic: people heading home from work, running errands, visiting family. The raised median on that stretch of KY-80 exists precisely to prevent head-on collisions between opposing lanes, yet it was crossed.

LEX18’s reporting adds a small but telling piece of context: its account, like KSP’s, notes that the Jeep driver survived with injuries that were not life-threatening. The asymmetry of the outcome — one man dead at the scene, the other treated and released-level hurt — is the kind of detail that stays with a community long after the wreckage is cleared.

What happens next is spelled out in the official record: the autopsy, the toxicology results, and Trooper Moore’s reconstruction will determine whether charges or further findings follow. Until those pieces come together, KSP has not named a cause, and neither outlet reporting the crash has offered one. The Perry County Coroner’s Office pronounced Baisden deceased on scene; the official determination of how and why the crash occurred is still pending.

For now, the case stands where fatal crash investigations so often stand in the first days — a family notified, a road reopened, and a reconstruction team measuring skid marks and vehicle positions on KY-80, waiting on lab results that could take weeks. The question that has not been answered is the one that matters: what made a 2023 Jeep Wrangler cross a raised median at 5:34 on a Tuesday evening.