20-year-old Macon crash victim 'always so positive,' close friend says
Charges were still pending Monday against a 63-year-old man who authorities said was driving a Ford F-250 pickup truck the wrong way on Interstate 75 Sunday night when he slammed head-on into a Toyota Corolla, killing the car's 20-year-old driver.
Bibb County sheriff's officials said it wasn't immediately clear where the northbound truck's driver, Curtis Williams, drove onto the freeway. The 7:30 p.m. crash happened in the interstate's southbound lanes, near the Eisenhower Parkway overpass in Macon.
Williams was said to be in stable condition at a city hospital. The Toyota's driver, a Macon woman named Tylar Coley, died at the scene.
A friend of hers said Monday she wasn't sure, but that Coley may have been on her way home or to visit friends.
The friend, Jazmen Flowers, said she and Coley, both 2013 graduates of Central High School, were like sisters.
Coley, who worked at Chipotle in north Macon, had attended college in Savannah and gone to a technical school in Warner Robins.
"She found joy in her job," Flowers said. "She always had a smile on her face and was always so positive."
Flowers, a 19-year-old junior at Georgia Southern University, said Coley was taking time off from school to decide what she wanted to do with her life.
"We used to talk about how it would be when we both got older," Flowers said, "how when we'd both get married and have families."
She said Coley was "that friend who was there for you. She was the one who meshed our group together. She wanted everybody to get along, be happy."
Coley, who was in the marching band at Central, was looking forward to attending an Atlanta concert next week by the singer known as The Weeknd.
"She had just bought her ticket," Flowers said.
To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397 or find him on Twitter@joekovacjr.
This story was originally published December 7, 2015 at 10:28 PM with the headline "20-year-old Macon crash victim 'always so positive,' close friend says ."