Just moments before a head-on crash killed two people on Ga. 400, several drivers called 911 to report a wrong-way driver, police said Thursday.
"He's going south in the northbound lane," one caller told the operator.
But by then, it was already too late. Moments later, a 24-year-old woman slammed head-on to another car, killing herself and the 44-year-old man driving the other car.
Callers to 911 reported seeing the woman, later identified as Frampere Ingle, enter Ga. 400 from Lenox Road. But she was on the wrong side of the highway and continued traveling in the lane next to the median until she collided with Eric Hanks' car in the pre-dawn hours Wednesday, Atlanta police said.
Hanks died at the scene and Ingle died after being transported to Grady Memorial Hospital. A female passenger in Ingle's vehicle was critically injured.
After seeing the crash, some drivers stopped and tried to help the victims, according to the 911 calls, obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She could hear a woman screaming, but it was hard to see through the wreckage, one woman said.
"I can't really tell because the front of the car is literally smashed into the front seat," the caller said.
Police have said they believe alcohol may have played a role in the wreck. Toxicology tests are pending, which is routine in fatal wrecks, the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office said.
Hanks' fiancee, Gladys Ferguson, told Channel 2 Action News that Hanks was excited to get his mobile barbecue business going after previously going through difficult days financially. Hanks was the type of man always willing to help others, Ferguson said, even if meant giving someone food that couldn't afford it.
"He was getting to where he knew what he wanted in life, just at the brink of doing it and in an instant ..." Ferguson said through tears. "He didn't deserve that. That was the last thing I expected to hear."
Making the tragedy more difficult for family and friends was knowing that it could have been prevented.
"When a person like that with energy, a good soul, come into people's lives and he's gone the next day, you just never know how much time you have," Hanks' neighbor, Duane West, told the Channel 2.
Ingle, who briefly attended Marietta High School, is survived by two children.
