A woman is dead after a vehicle with a 14-year-old at the wheel crashed into her house following a police pursuit that reached speeds over 130 mph Thursday morning, the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office confirmed.
A deputy first encountered the vehicle around 2 a.m. as he was patrolling the area of Highway 54 and Johnson Road, the sheriff’s office said in a news release. The vehicle, a 1997 Acura 3.2 TL, had failed to dim its headlights, so the deputy turned around to follow the vehicle and attempted a traffic stop.
The vehicle sped off and the deputy eventually lost sight of it, the news release states. As the deputy continued down Johnson Road, he saw a person standing in a yard and asked the person if they’d seen a speeding vehicle.
The person told the deputy they had seen the vehicle, and they believed it had crashed into a neighboring house in the 900 block of Johnson Road.
The deputy went to the house and confirmed the vehicle had crashed into it, the release states. He also found the 14-year-old believed to have been the driver. The sheriff’s office did not publicly identify the teen.
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Investigators believe the Acura left the roadway, struck a guy wire, a fence, and finally the home.
A man and a woman who were inside the house at the time of the crash were taken to a hospital, the release states. The woman, identified by the Coweta County Coroner’s Office as 56-year-old Annette Rush, died a short time later. The sheriff’s office did not publicly identify the man or disclose his condition.
The teen also was taken to a hospital for evaluation and then taken to a youth detention center. He faces a charge of homicide by vehicle, which will be investigated by the Georgia State Patrol, and other traffic offenses that will be filed by the sheriff’s office.
At the scene of the crash and once the sun rose, family and friends convened to comfort the woman’s husband and son as news of the tragedy began to spread among the small, tight-knit community.
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
Credit: JOHN SPINK / AJC
“There’s no words to describe it. It’s just unbelievable. ... This was some place people were living, and it looks like, it looks like that,” family friend and neighbor Sara Brooks said quietly upon seeing the aftermath of the crash.
Nearly the entire facade of the home was destroyed, and sheathing was already being installed to close the large opening into what appeared to be the living room and a bedroom. A mattress could be seen poking through the rubble, and the porch deck and railing appeared to be unstable.
Brooks, who said she knew the victim all of her life, described her as a very kind, gentle woman who loved her family.
“She has a child that is in a wheelchair, and she took very good care of that child all of the time — her family, period. She took care of all of them,” Brooks said.
No other details were released by police about why or how the 14-year-old obtained the vehicle and was driving at such an hour.
