Five die in car wreck

An active duty sailor serving in Afghanistan lost his wife and three of his children in a car accident Thursday afternoon that also killed an Abbeville man in Wilcox County.

April Cutina “Tina” White, 37, of Abbeville, was driving westbound in a 2002 two-door Toyota Solara on U.S. 280 about a mile east of Rochelle when she crossed the center line and ran head on into a Georgia Department of Human Resources van, said Chief Deputy Adam Newman of the Wilcox County Sheriff’s Office.

White and three of her children — daughters Jylan, 4, and Jada, 9, and her 7-year-old son Saunte — were killed in the accident, said Wilcox County Coroner Janice Brown.

A passenger in the Ford van, 68-year-old Daniel Elder, who was riding behind the driver, was also killed in the 4 p.m. accident, Brown said.

The van driver, Brenda Gaines, also of Wilcox County, was critically injured and was taken to The Medical Center of Central Georgia, Newman said.

Elder was being driven home through a state program that assists mentally challenged senior citizens with jobs, Newman said.

“At this time it looks like the passenger car crossed over in front of the van,” Newman said. “A mother and three children killed, that is just terrible.”

Ga. 280 was closed for about two hours as the Georgia State Patrol investigated the accident, he said.

State trooper Charles Gordon said they may never know what caused White to swerve.

“I can sit here second-guessing all day, but I don’t know,” Gordon said.

April White had to be cut from the driver’s seat, Saunte was on the floorboard of the back seat, and the girls had been thrown from the vehicle and were barely alive when rescuers arrived, Gordon said.

“None of them were buckled in,” Gordon said. “The young ’uns, if they were in the back seat, may have survived if they had been buckled in.”

Jylan died at the hospital in Cordele and Jada was airlifted to Macon where she was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. at the emergency room of The Medical Center of Central Georgia, said Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones.

Elder and Gaines were both using their seat belts, Gordon said. Gaines was in serious but stable condition in the hospital’s intensive care unit late Friday morning.

The three children attended Wilcox County Elementary School, where the children’s desks have been left in place while counselors and spiritual leaders were on hand Friday morning.

“A lot of the children did not know it until they got on the bus,” principal Diane Walker said.

Teachers were told to talk to the students in class about the accident and ask the students to write about their feelings about the tragic death of their classmates.

“They were the kind that you really enjoyed having in your school,” said Walker, who often saw their mother. “She picked them up and dropped them off at school every day.”

White’s brother, Lee Daniels Jr., said his sister worked at a lawn mower parts shop in McRae and had recently completed nursing school.

The American Red Cross has been notified to contact Petty Officer 2nd Class Clarence Leon White, who was stationed in Williamsburg, Va., with the U.S. Navy but was separated from his wife.

His stepson, Trey Hollis, was at a high school basketball game at the time of the accident and repeatedly tried to reach his mother on her cell phone, authorities said.

White also is survived by a 19-year-old daughter, Daniels said.