A head-on crash Saturday afternoon between an SUV and a large van on U.S. Highway 301 north of Claxton left three people dead at the scene, two others flown by helicopter to a Savannah trauma center and a sixth person taken by ambulance to East Georgia Regional Medical Center in Statesboro.
As of Monday evening, investigators were still attempting to notify all next of kin and had not released names, after the accident that reportedly involved four Haitian nationals, all adults, in one vehicle and two Hispanic men in the other.
First-responder agencies received the call at 1:34 p.m. Saturday that the accident had occurred just south of the intersection of U.S. 301 with Georgia Highway 169 in Evans County, said Georgia State Patrol Sgt. First Class David Laff, from Post 18, Reidsville. Reached a couple of hours later, he had been on the scene to assist other troopers who were handling the investigation directly. A blue Nissan Rogue was traveling south in a northbound lane when it struck a Ford E-350 full-size, commercial-type van head-on, according to the State Patrol’s preliminary information.
The Nissan Rogue, an SUV, “was on the wrong side of the road,” Laff said. “This was just south of 169 on 301, and they hit head-on.”
Of the four people in the Nissan Rogue, three were deceased at the scene, he said. Revising here from Saturday’s initial information, it was the fourth person from the SUV and the driver from the Ford van who were airlifted to Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah, while the passenger from the Ford van was transported by EMS ambulance to the Statesboro hospital, according to an investigating trooper reached for an update Monday.
On Saturday, Laff had described efforts the State Patrol had underway to identify the dead and injured and contact their families.
“We’re having trouble (identifying) folks, and we’ve got troopers from Post 45, which is Statesboro, that are headed to the hospital to try to make contact with the person that was transported from the blue Rogue, and then we have a trooper from the Rincon post, Post 42, that’s going to Savannah Memorial to try to make contact with two people that were flown there,” Laff said about 3:30 p.m. Saturday.
Monday update
Late Monday afternoon, Labor Day, GSP Senior Trooper David Harris, who was handling the investigation, still was not releasing names but had some information on the condition of the survivors.
“We still haven’t notified next of kin, so the names won’t be available,” Harris said. “The fourth person in the (Nissan Rogue) is still in critical condition as of yesterday. The driver and the passenger from the van, I think they’re in stable condition.”
He added that he hoped to check for a possible further update Monday evening.
As reported Saturday, the van occupants were two Hispanic men. The four occupants of the Nissan Rogue were all adults from Haiti, and those who died were two men and a woman, while the survivor from the Nissan is a man, Harris said Monday. Language and distance had complicated the always difficult task of notifying families.
“They were Haitians, so it’s hard …. We’ve got a guy that’s working on trying to notify the next of kin before we can get the names released,” he said.
Harris confirmed that the Nissan Rogue was southbound in the northbound left lane when the crash occurred. He said he didn’t know how long the vehicle had been traveling on the wrong side of the road and that why it was doing so was still under investigation.
Although U.S. 301 is a divided highway in some sections between Claxton and Statesboro, in that section near Georgia 169 the only divider between the two northbound and the two southbound lanes is a pair of yellow stripes.
After the crash, as 4 p.m. Saturday approached, U.S. Highway 301 remained closed for a section south of the Georgia 169 intersection, with southbound drivers being rerouted onto 169. In addition to GSP troopers, Evans County Sheriff’s Office deputies and Fire Department and EMS personnel were also on the scene assisting for some time after the accident. A medical airlift helicopter landed on the highway before taking off for Savannah, and a small crowd of witnesses or bystanders remained there well over an hour after the crash.