With the help of Cpl. Andrew Gideon of the Georgia State Patrol and one of the accident victims, The Dade Planet is today able to provide this update on two serious automobile accidents on which it had earlier reported preliminary information:
In an incident on Saturday afternoon around 5:30 p.m., The Planet reported that a pickup truck had struck a Honda vehicle coming down Highway 136 East; then the truck proceeded on down the mountain briefly before, in what the GSP was treating as a separate accident, itself crashing and rolling over.
(Photo courtesy of Greg Mayfield)
The couple in the Honda were transported to the hospital via ambulance. The driver of the pickup, more seriously injured, was airlifted to Erlanger.
Now the couple, Greg and Beverly Mayfield of Fort Payne, Ala., report that they were hospitalized at Erlanger but have now been released and are undergoing what they understand will be a slow recovery. Greg Mayfield said by email that he and his wife had been returning home down 136 in their Honda Accord from a grandchild's third birthday party in Flintstone when a pickup truck speeding down the mountain--"The person driving seemed to be going 80 mph," wrote Mayfield--rammed them from behind.
As for the driver of the pickup truck, GSP's Cpl. Gideon identified her as Jennifer Walston, 32, of East Ridge, Tenn. GSP's report on that part of the incident is still incomplete but as of Gideon's last information, Ms. Walston was in the intensive care unit at Erlanger but still surviving. Gideon said she had been driving a 1986 Ford 150. Any potential charges against her for the accident with the Mayfields, or for leaving the scene of that accident, remain pending as she recovers.
As for a previous fatal accident on I-24 in north Dade County on Friday, Nov. 9, Gideon was able to confirm the identity of the fatality as Ramiro Delgado, 32, of Roswell, Ga. But the GSP still has nothing to report as to what may have caused Delgado to cross the grass median and crash head-on into a tractor-trailer truck headed in the opposite direction.
The tractor-trailer driver in the Friday accident was not seriously injured.
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