A woman who had moved to Georgia after Hurricane Katrina was killed Wednesday in west Georgia after a state DOT mower struck a large rock and sent it flying through the windshield of a car and into the back seat where she was a passenger.
Troup County Coroner Jeff Cook identified the woman as Annie Lee, 58, of LaGrange. Cook said Lee had moved to the area in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
"She comes up here to make a new life after Katrina and then this happens ... it's just unreal," Cook told the AJC. He said Lee's family would be taking her body back to Louisiana for burial.
The incident happened at about 1 p.m. on U.S. 27 in Troup County, Sgt. Chad Mann of the Troup County Sheriff’s Office told the Ledger-Enquirer.
The car was headed north behind a Bush Hog mower operated by the Georgia Department of Transportation. The rock grazed the front passenger across the lips before striking the woman in the back seat and killing her instantly, Mann said. Lee was pronounced dead at the scene.
Four additional occupants of the car reported only minor injuries, Mann said.
Cook said a similar incident occurred in Troup County a few years ago, when a prisoner on a work detail was hit in the jugular by a rock thrown from a mower. The prisoner, who Cook said was scheduled to be released the next day, died.
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