A head-on collision of two cars on U.S. Highway 25 in Jenkins County near midnight Friday, May 10, claimed the lives of four people, including a couple from Statesboro and a mother and child from the Augusta area.
A 2019 Chevrolet Trax driven by Shyneice Sanders, 30, of Fort Eisenhower (until recently Fort Gordon) at Augusta traveled on the wrong side of the four-lane, grass median-divided highway for some distance before the crash, said Senior Trooper Michael Jackson of the Georgia State Patrol. In the car with Sanders was her 3-year-old daughter, Zoeigh Wright.
The Chevrolet was moving southbound in the northbound righthand lane of U.S. 25 when it collided with a 2015 Toyota Avalon occupied by Jacquelyn Lynde Johnson and William Lee Johnson, both 61, who were headed northbound in the northbound righthand lane at Gays Hill Church Road. Known by their middle names, Lynde and Lee, the Johnsons were a married couple, originally from Millen but who had made Statesboro their home, and frequently traveled between Statesboro and Millen.
Sanders, Wright and both Johnsons were killed in the crash, Trooper Jackson confirmed, after Jenkins County Coroner Henry Young had earlier reported that all four occupants of the vehicles were dead at the scene. The initial call came in at 11:57 p.m. Friday, Jackson said.
In that stretch of highway, the speed limit is 65 mph, and both vehicles appeared to have been traveling at about that speed at least, said Jackson, who is part of the State Patrol’s Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team, or SCRT, assigned to investigate the crash further for GSP Post 21.
As of Monday afternoon, the cause of Sanders’ being on the wrong side remained unknown, according to Jackson, who said, “We know she’d been driving on the wrong side of the road for a little bit.”
Investigators do not suspect “impairment,” meaning with drugs or alcohol, but do not know if health or mental issues were involved, he said.
The Chevrolet Trax burned as a result of the crash. But Jackson said he would try to recover data from the airbag module of the badly damaged Toyota and use momentum equations to attempt to calculate the speed of the Chevrolet.