Mom, 4-year-old son killed in crash with tractor-trailer on I-75 in Houston County, cops say
An Atlanta-area woman was killed along with her 4-year-old son early Sunday when their minivan was struck by a tractor-trailer rig on Interstate 75 in south Houston County.
Deputy coroner David Gabbard said the woman, Alisha Young, 39, of Snellville, and her son, Malakai Young, died in the 3:30 a.m. crash.
Gabbard said another child, Kayden Young, who was about 2 years old, was flown by a medical helicopter to a Macon hospital.
“I’ve been told that he’s fine,” Gabbard told The Telegraph on Monday.
Gabbard said relatives informed him that Young was in the process of moving to Orlando, Florida.
The crash happened in the freeway’s northbound lanes near mile marker 125, just south of the exit at Ga. 26, west of Elko and about nine miles south of Perry.
Gabbard said it was unclear why the family was headed north on the interstate and theorized that Alisha Young may have gotten on the freeway headed the wrong direction at some point.
He said witnesses at the scene had said the minivan may have been traveling at a slower speed in the right lane. Gabbard said a faster-moving semi truck came up behind the minivan and swerved and missed it, but that another big rig behind the first one clipped the rear of the van and spun it off the road.
“It was pretty much destroyed,” Gabbard said of the minivan.
The Georgia State Patrol was still investigating the cause of the crash.