A head-on crash Saturday afternoon, Aug. 31, 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 Labor Day weekend drew to a close Monday evening, investigators were still attempting to notify all next of kin and had not released names from the accident that involved four Haitian nationals, all adults, in one vehicle and two Hispanic men in the other. But by Wednesday, two of the deceased individuals, a man and a woman, had been identified, and although one of the survivors reportedly remained hospitalized in critical condition, one had gone home soon after the crash and another was recovering after surgery, according to an investigating trooper.
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. 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, he said.
The Nissan Rogue, an SUV, “was on the wrong side of the road,” Laff said.
Of the four people in the Nissan Rogue, three were deceased at the scene. The fourth person from the SUV and the driver from the Ford van 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,” he said about 3:30 p.m. the day of the crash.
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.
Language and distance had complicated the always difficult task of notifying families of the deceased.
“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,” Harris had said Monday.
Crash victims named
But by Wednesday afternoon, the next of kin of two of the deceased crash victims had been identified. They were Walson Augustin, 27, driver of the Nissan Rogue, and his passenger Marie Lavoile, 47, both originally from Haiti, but also with an Archie Mitchell Road, Claxton, address, Harris said. The name of the third deceased person, also from Haiti, was still not being released for lack of family notification.
The surviving passenger from the Rogue, Harris said, remained in critical condition at the Savannah hospital, with family not reached for notification.
But the passenger from the Ford van, Carlos Hernandez, who had a North Charleston, S.C., address, had been released from the Statesboro hospital the same day, and the driver of the van, Juan Martinez, 58, of Claxton, had undergone surgery and could possibly go home by the end of the week, the trooper said after speaking to a family member.
Harris confirmed that the Nissan Rogue was southbound in the northbound left lane when the crash occurred. He said he didn’t have any explanation why, since he has been unable to speak to anyone from that vehicle.
Both drivers were licensed, and no charges are expected, Harris said.
Although U.S. 301 is a divided highway in some sections between Claxton and Statesboro, in Evans County around 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 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.