Toddler may not have been in car seat during fatal I-75 crash

A witness who drove up on a fatal crash on Interstate 75 early Friday said the driver blamed himself for his 2-year-old daughter’s death.

Nurse Rachel Saltis was headed home to Ohio when she saw flashing blue lights warning of an upcoming pileup in the northbound lanes near mile marker 136 in Perry.

As traffic slowed due to the multivehicle accident, a GMC Yukon slammed into the back of a tractor-trailer near the Georgia National Fairgrounds and Agricenter at mile marker 134.

The Waycross man had the little girl in the front seat of the Yukon as they headed to Missouri to return the child to her mother, according to initial reports from the Georgia State Patrol.

Saltis, who had her 3-year-old with her at the time, ran up to the mangled vehicle to render aid and found the driver walking around barefoot on broken glass amid the wreckage.

“He said, ‘Oh my God, my daughter. My 2-year-old daughter is dead. She wasn’t in a car seat ...,” Saltis said in a phone interview.

The girl sustained a severe head injury and died on impact, authorities said.

State troopers out of the Perry post were investigating the first crash that injured several people not far from Sam Nunn Boulevard when they were called to the second crash that killed the young girl.

“There was a car seat in the front seat. Now whether or not she was in the car seat we’ll have to determine,” Sgt. Robbie Roberson said Friday.

Even if she were in a car seat, the front of a car is not the safest place for a child, he said.

“It’s recommended that children under 13 ride in the back seat.”

It had been raining before both collisions.

“The driver of the SUV could not stop in time,” Roberson said. “He slid on wet pavement.”

The Georgia State Patrol was withholding the identities of the driver and his daughter Friday afternoon as the Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team began looking at the evidence and gathering data from the Yukon, which sustained heavy damage.

Houston County Coroner Danny Galpin pronounced the little girl dead at the scene just after 1 a.m. Friday.

She sustained devastating injuries when the passenger side of the vehicle hit the back of the tractor-trailer.

“Daddy walked away with just a few scratches,” Galpin said.

He said the vehicle was so damaged, he couldn’t tell if there was a car seat.

The SUV was loaded to the hilt with lots of tools, said Saltis, who called The Telegraph upset that troopers initially said the child was in a safety seat.

Saltis let the man use her cellphone to make more than a dozen calls to contact relatives and get on Facebook to notify others, she said.

After he was taken to the hospital, Saltis said she called his mother to let her know.

The Georgia State Patrol reopened all northbound lanes about 3 a.m. Friday after investigating both scenes.

The SCRT team was on the scene later in the day.

Bibb County also had its share of interstate traffic troubles just before 9 p.m. Thursday when a tractor-trailer jack-knifed and went into a ditch on I-75 North at the I-16 split, which is undergoing a massive transformation.

All exit lanes were shut down in the aftermath of that crash, but were cleared by 1 a.m.

Around 6 p.m., another 18-wheeler caught fire near Bass Road and exit 172 on Interstate 75 north, blocking the right lane and the exit for more than an hour.

This story was originally published August 4, 2017 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Toddler may not have been in car seat during fatal I-75 crash."