A woman who led deputies on a high-speed chase through two counties and died in a fiery crash was wanted in metro Atlanta, the Georgia State Patrol said.
About 8:21 p.m. Wednesday, a Banks County sheriff’s deputy spotted a silver Chrysler 200 speeding on I-85 south and tried to stop the car, GSP spokesman Tim Meyer said. Instead of stopping, the driver sped south into Jackson County at speeds exceeding 90 mph.
“It appears there may have been an outstanding arrest warrant for the driver, Rebecca Mack, for failure to appear on a shoplifting charge out of Lilburn,” Meyer said.
Mack, 21, of Greenville, S.C., tried to exit I-85 at the Maysville/Commerce exit. However, “the vehicle was traveling too fast for the curve and left the roadway off the west shoulder,” Meyer said. “It struck a traffic sign and a tree.”
According to the Gainesville Times, the Chrysler caught fire. The deputy put out the fire, Banks sheriff's Lt. Carissa McFaddin said.
A total of five people, most of them from Greenville, S.C., were in the car. Mack and passengers Clifton Gordon and Jamarkeiz Jenkins were killed, Meyer said. Two other passengers, Zaire Lamond Hewins and Chrishanique Yeargin, were taken to Northeast Georgia Hospital in Gainesville, authorities said. Their conditions were not known.
Gordon, 23, was in the front seat. Jenkins, 29, of Mauldin, S.C., was in the back seat with Hewins and Yeargin, both 22, Meyer said.
“It is unknown if drugs or alcohol was a contributing factor involved in this crash,” Meyer said. “That is still being investigated.”
