The sight is haunting Lathario Jackson.
Around 8 a.m. Wednesday, the 31-year-old Stone Mountain man was driving near the intersection of McAfee Road and Shamrock Drive when he saw a van plow into an SUV, tossing it into a telephone pole. Jackson ran to check on the driver of the SUV while the woman driving the van fled the scene with a passenger and a baby, which appeared to be six to nine months old, the witness told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In the backseat of the SUV, Jackson, a father of five, saw an empty child's car seat and feared the lifeless man in the front seat just left behind a family.
"It’s very troubling, a sad situation,” Jackson said.
The victim was identified in a DeKalb County police report released Thursday morning as Lithonia resident Terrence Smith. He was pronounced dead on the scene.
Officers spoke with Jackson and two other witnesses, who said the van, a gold 1999 Dodge Caravan, ran a stop sign and crashed into Smith's SUV.
Maj. Stephen Fore of DeKalb police said Thursday: "Detectives have located a suspect already and following up on the case this morning." The suspect's identity hasn't been released.
Jackson said the van almost hit him as well.
He thought the people in it were also getting out to help the man in the SUV.
"It didn’t even dawn on me that they were running because I was shell shocked," he said.
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