A 5-year old boy was killed after a tree crashed into his mother’s car during the severe weather in Georgia Thursday afternoon.
Egan Jeffcoat was in a car with his mother Tabatha Anglin and an unnamed passenger when a tornado ripped through the town of Jackson, causing a tree to crash into their vehicle. The 5-year old died of injuries he sustained and the unnamed passenger was critically injured, suffering multiple broken bones. Anglin was not injured, WSBTV reported.
One other person is in critical condition https://t.co/GxNHdDJAuh
— WSB-TV (@wsbtv) January 13, 2023
Just a few miles away, Butts County Commissioner Ken Rivers was also caught off guard by the storm as he drove home in his truck with his son, though they were unfortunately unharmed. “As soon as I turned my truck around, we were in a tornado. It was dark; there was debris hitting us from all angles. Hail. As you can see, the tree hit the front of the truck, bounced on the windshield, and then off my truck. I put it in park and told my son, ‘Be calm.’ So we sat until the tornado passed,” Rivers told WSBTV.
A 16-year veteran with the Georgia Department of Transportation was responding to storm damage when he was killed. Sean Kornacki, 40, was using a chainsaw to clear away a highway that was littered with fallen trees when one broke free and struck him in the head, 11 Alive reported. (RELATED: ‘All I Could Do Was Start Praying’: Man Survives Being Crushed Inside His Truck By A Tree)
“He loved his job. He was on call all the time. He could get home from work and not even have his boots off yet and they would say come back to work because there’s a tree down or a stop sign down,” his mother, Kim Kornacki told the outlet.
Jeffcoat and Kornacki are just two of nine confirmed fatalities across Georgia and Alabama after multiple tornadoes ripped through the states. That number is expected to rise, Accuweather reported. In Autauga County, Alabama the death toll was initially at six, but raised to seven after search and rescue operations recovered the body of a woman who had been reported missing in the aftermath of the storm, the outlet stated.