Survivor recalls fatal Easter crash

It was a beautiful spring afternoon, and Tracie Johnson was cruising home from church in her pastor’s Volkswagen Beetle. She was driving the car home for him as a favor, her 6-year-old daughter Morgan in the back seat. Her husband and son were ahead of her in the family’s SUV. They were looking forward to Easter dinner. They were almost home.

In the opposite lane on Camp Creek Parkway was a Mercedes-Benz 320 carrying a family the Johnsons had briefly met at a birthday party months before. Speeding alongside the Mercedes, police say, was a BMW driven by a young woman on an errand to pick up ice cream and cake.

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Courtesy WSB-TV

Tracie Johnson and husband Morris Johnson II pose with son Morris III and daughter Morgan. On Easter, mother and daughter were in a car that was hit head-on, killing Morgan, gravely injuring her mom and also killing the four people in the other vehicle. Authorities blame a third driver.

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Their three paths crossed violently about 1:30 p.m. on April 12. The fiery crash left Johnson the sole survivor of the two cars that collided head-on and led to an intense 10-day search for the BMW driver, who left the scene.

On Monday, Tracie Johnson will be hoisted into a makeshift hospital bed and join her husband Morris Johnson II and their 11-year-old son, Morris III, at an East Point church to bid farewell to Morgan, whom family members called “Princess.”

The four passengers in the Mercedes, Robert and Delisia Carter and their two children, were buried a week ago. Aimee Michael, 22, who police say was the driver of the BMW, was arrested last week and remains in jail, facing five counts of vehicular homicide.

The Johnsons recalled the crash Friday afternoon in Tracie’s room at Grady Memorial Hospital. She had just finished a therapy session on her two broken legs and managed to smile while summoning nurses to bring pain medication. The fractured bones have required surgically implanted rods. Her hip has a pin. Her heel is fractured. Her collarbone broken. A smiley face balloon and one wishing “Get Well” floated behind her bed.

The Johnsons met in elementary school and have been together since going to see the movie “Endless Love” in 1981. They waited to get married until after they finished college, her at Spelman and him at Georgia State.

On Friday, the couple conferred with a stream of people about the next stage of their lives — including home health-care aides, rehab specialists and investigators from the district attorney’s office. In between, the Johnsons talked about the events of Easter Sunday.

Tracie agreed to drive home the car of Carolyn Waller, her friend and the pastor’s wife, because the Wallers were headed to Macon on a family emergency involving a car accident.

Just ahead of Tracie, in the Johnsons’ Lexus SUV, her husband, Morris, noticed a commotion from the corner of his eye.

Police say the BMW switched lanes into the Carters’ Mercedes, forcing the two cars to spin across the median and into oncoming lanes.

“I didn’t see the bump but I saw the cars entering the median,” Morris recalled. “My concern was to get by it. I was hoping she’d get by it.”

He glanced in the rear-view mirror. Tracie was farther back than he thought.

He heard an explosion.

Tracie never saw the Mercedes until the end.

“It was instantaneous,” she said. “There was nothing there and then it was there. Boom. It was just there coming up out of the median.”

The Mercedes slammed into the front of the Beetle, almost fusing the two vehicles together, Morris recalled. The Mercedes was ablaze, and Tracie’s door would not open as he and bystanders feverishly tried to get in.

“I felt the heat,” she said. “I had to lie down on the passenger side to get away from it. I knew my legs were broken. They were just hanging there.”

Rescue crews finally pulled Tracie to safety. Her daughter, however, never had a chance, Morris said. She died from severe trauma to her midsection, where the lapbelt was secured.

Asked about the BMW driver, Tracie Johnson closed her eyes.

Police say Aimee Michael fled the scene, hid the damaged car in a garage and finally told her family what had happened after two days. Authorities say the car had been repaired.

“The lack of compassion of leaving the scene and having parents that don’t tell you to do the right thing and turn yourself in, that’s what’s so disheartening,” Tracie Johnson said. “It’s basic morality.

“I’ll pray for that family.”