Chris Butler was as happy as his family had ever seen him. Recently back from a stint in the Army, he was enjoying the life of a 21-year-old.
Butler was killed about 8 a.m. Tuesday doing what was natural to him, dropping everything to help a friend in the aftermath of the fierce thunderstorms that swept through metro Atlanta.
As he navigated his Toyota Camry through the rain and downed limbs, the roots of a large oak tree towering over Tilden Avenue near East Marietta Street slipped from the rain-soaked soil. The massive tree landed on Butler's car, crushing it and trapping him inside.
He became the state's seventh fatality from the overnight storms, whose winds spawned at least one tornado and felled towering trees across Georgia, causing millions of dollars in damage, including destroyed houses and downed power lines.
Butler's aunt Jackie Williamson said the family was in shock.
"We can't believe that this happened," she said. "He was enjoying his 21-year-old life, working and helping others, but also having fun."
Atlanta, which prides itself on being a city within a forest -- with its lush canopy of magnolias, southern pines, oaks and dogwoods -- has seen this danger before.
In July 2003, a mother and her two young sons died when a 70-foot oak in the city's Virginia-Highland neighborhood uprooted during a severe storm and crashed into their SUV. That same month, a visiting professor from Japan was killed in his car by a falling oak limb in Peachtree Hill.
Atlanta's urban forests contain thousands of hardwoods more than 50 years old, and under the right conditions they can be deadly, said Tom Coffin, a former senior field arborist for the city of Atlanta.
"There's a lot of weight in those old trees, tons and tons," Coffin said. "If you get a saturated soil and a big storm, the high winds can knock them right down. "
Tuesday's storm brought wind gusts up to 70 mph along with drenching rains.
"What happens is that the soil gets so saturated, it acts like it's a liquid," Coffin said. "And if the tree has any root damage or disease that's weakened it, the wind can knock it over just like a boat in a storm going over as the wind catches a mast and sail."
Downed trees led to most of the state's other storm-related fatalities.
In the Butts County town of Jackson, an enormous tree limb crashed through a home, killing Alix Bonhomme Jr. and his 4-year-old son, Alix III. Bonhomme was holding the boy as the storm passed through.
An unidentified Irwin County man was killed when a tree struck his home, according to emergency officials.
In Colquitt County, a 56-year-old county road worker, Ronnie Taylor, was killed early Tuesday when he struck a large oak tree in the middle of the road on his way to work. Also in Colquitt, a county inmate was killed Tuesday when a tree fell on him as he helped with storm cleanup, according to the Gazette.
In rural South Georgia, authorities said a 45-year-old man was found dead under debris after a mobile home in Dodge County was ripped from its foundation by a tornado. Authorities said the man was thrown about 100 yards from the trailer, and three other people in the structure were injured.
The storms also caused nearly 186,000 Georgia Power customers to lose power across the state, including 70,000 outages in metro Atlanta.
Georgia Power reported that it was bringing in out-of-state utility crews to help restore electricity.
State Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens said Georgia's insured losses from the storms will total at least $32 million.
Butler's family was gathering together Tuesday evening, Williamson said, but they weren't ready yet to talk in depth with media about Butler.
And friends started leaving messages for each other on Butler's Facebook page. One post read: "Miss you already. Good news is I have the amazing smile you gave me yesterday in my heart and head forever."
His family said that Butler attended North Atlanta High School, where he was active in the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. He completed his diploma through a General Educational Development program before he went into the Army. The family didn't offer details on his time in the military.
"We just want everyone to know what a good and decent, happy young man he was," Williamson said. "He had his whole life in front of him. He could have been anything that he wanted to be.
A friend of Butler's, Brandon Brantley, said he had been stopped Tuesday morning by a woman in the Northwest Atlanta neighborhood. She asked whether he had talked to Butler that morning
She said she had just seen a car like Butler's go down the street a few minutes earlier, just before she heard a loud noise. Brantley made his way to the scene and saw the white Toyota Camry crushed beneath the massive branches of an old oak tree. He recognized a "Go Army" sticker on the bumper.
It was Butler's car.
Brantley, who used to be Butler's boss when they both worked at a party planning company, said he last spoke with Butler on Monday night.
"He had a really good heart and cared a lot about people," Brantley said. Butler, he said, was really interested in teaching kids about martial arts "so they could have something else in their lives and stay off the street. ... In the last three years he had grown up to be a really good man."
Staff writer Alexis Stevens and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Forecast
Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Karen Minton predicts sunny skies and southerly winds of 5-15 mph Wednesday and Thursday. There could be patchy morning frost Wednesday, with lows near 40 in town and in the mid 30s in the suburbs. Wednesday’s high will be in the upper 60s. On Thursday, the high will climb to the mid 70, and lows will be in the upper 40s. The weather should be warmer later in the week, with highs in the upper 70s on Friday and tipping 80 on Saturday. The lows will hover around 60 both days.
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