UPDATE: One dead, two injured in fiery Lumpkin Co. crash

UPDATED 12:30 P.M. FRIDAY:

One person was killed and two injured, one seriously, in fiery two-vehicle crash on Georgia 400 in Lumpkin County Thursday night. The state patrol says it happened at the Whelchel Road intersection.

STATE PATROL NARRATIVE:

“The responding troopers determined that a white Ford Transit was traveling north on…400 when it attempted to turn left onto Whelchel. Upon doing so, the Ford Transit failed to yield to a southbound tractor trailer. The front of the tractor trailer then struck the front of the Ford Transit.

The tractor trailer then traveled off the roadway and into the wood line where it ignited. The driver of the Ford Transit was pronounced deceased upon arriving at Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC) Lumpkin. The second occupant in the Ford Transit was transported by ambulance to NGMC Gainesville. The driver of the tractor trailer was (airlifted) to NGMC Gainesville.”

Names of those involved were not available late Friday morning.

EARLIER STORY. POSTED THURSDAY NIGHT: An accident involving a tractor-trailer and another vehicle occurred Thursday night on Ga. 400 at the Dawson-Lumpkin county line. One vehicle ended up in the northbound lanes, the other in the southbound lanes.

About the Author

Ken Stanford is Online News Editor for GLORY 97.5, a position he has held since August 2022.

Ken was born in Moultrie, Georgia, and says he knew from the time he was 5 or 6 he wanted to be a “radio announcer.” That dream was realized when he was hired by Moultrie radio station WMTM in 1960 at the age of 15 as a weekend disc jockey. A 1963 graduate of Moultrie (now Colquitt County) High School, he has spent his whole career in Georgia working for stations in Atlanta, Marietta, and Gainesville – most recently as News Director for 40 years at WDUN in Gainesville. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

Ken retired in 2011 but came out of retirement last year to help GLORY, on a part-time basis, beef-up its online news presence.

He is the recipient of many Associated Press awards and is a former judge of state and national Associated Press broadcast news contests. In 2005, he was presented with the Georgia Associated Press Broadcasters Association’s President’s Award for Excellence in Journalism and in 2019 was inducted into the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame.

He lives in Gainesville with his wife of 52 years, the former Sandra McKnight of Clio, Alabama, and they have one child, a daughter, Lisa, who lives in Cumming with her family.