A retired elementary school principal was killed in what authorities are calling a freak accident.
Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton says Lisa Toland died sometime Tuesday afternoon when she was working on her father’s farm on Dorcheat Road.
“She was riding a four-wheeler in the pasture with a spray rig hooked up on the back spraying some vegetation on the edge of the pond,” he said. “It looked like where the cows had made a trail, the four-wheeler dropped off into it.”
The four-wheeler shifted when the front tire dropped off, turning over the ATV and pinning her underneath the water, he said.
Toland’s stepmother became concerned, he says, and went to look for her. She discovered Toland at the pond but could not lift the ATV off her and went to get some help.
The cause of death appears to be drowning, Sexton said.
She was pronounced dead at the scene.
“It was just a freak accident,” the sheriff said. “She was out there trying to take care of the place, and she’d been working hard on the farm to get everything up to snuff. She was out there almost every day working on the farm.”
Her father is former Webster Parish police juryman Robert Earl Lee.
Toland retired from the Webster Parish School System from Central Elementary School in 2013. Her husband, Minden City Councilman Mike Toland, and three sons survive her.