Weather conditions Monday and Tuesday may have contributed to four different traffic incidents that the State Patrol Post 30 investigated.
A Crisp County sheriff’s deputy, Carl Warren Stowe complained of injuries and was transported to Crisp Regional after his patrol car hydroplaned on Hwy 41 south of Cordele Monday and went in a ditch, according to a report given by Dispatcher Malcolm Ford.
The bumper of Stowe’s vehicle struck a tree, and the patrol car had to be towed away on a wrecker.
Stowe reportedly was enroute to another incident on Hwy. 41 just south of the Hwy. 300 interchange about 3:30 p.m.
A tree had broken off and fallen across the roadway striking the hood, trunk and roof of a vehicle driven by Sharon Marie Flanders of Cordele.
Ms. Flanders was not injured in the mishap, according Ford, but traffic was halted for several minutes as county road crews worked to remove the tree from the top of the small car and the road.
During a heavy downpour in Dooly County Tuesday afternoon, five people required treatment after two chain reaction accidents on I-75.
The mishaps occurred almost simultaneously within a mile of one another between mile markers 114 and 115.
In one accident, a tractor trailer stopped in the center southbound lane. As the driver of a Mazda approached in heavy rain, he realized the vehicle ahead of him was stopped and he began to brake, Ford said.
He was not able to stop before striking the truck, however. Clarence Elmer Thompson and Myrtle Gabbert of Olive Hill, TN and Cheryl Wuelfing of Morris Chapel, TN all were injured in that wreck. Thompson was driving the Mazda, and the two women were passengers.
They were transported to the hospital by ambulance.
The second incident involved two tractor trailers and a Cavalier, Ford said. All three vehicles were traveling southbound.
One of the trucks and the Cavalier were slowing because traffic ahead was stopped, he said. The second truck then struck the rear of the first truck which plowed into the Cavalier.
Timothy Lamar Holman of Leslie, one of the truck drivers, and the driver of the Cavalier, Laurie Marks of Burlington, Ontario, Canada were injured, Ford reported.
