A University of Georgia student from metro Atlanta was killed early Friday in a pedestrian accident in Oconee County.
Bridget Thompson, 19, of Grayson, was a senior at UGA, officials said.
"The University of Georgia community mourns the tragic death of Bridget Thompson,” UGA spokesman Greg Trevor said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Bridget's family and friends."
Although Thompson was a senior majoring in Spanish and microbiology in the University of Georgia’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, she was not scheduled to graduate Friday, Trevor said.
Thompson had just finished the semester and was preparing to come home, Channel 2 Action News reported.
But about 3:50 a.m. Friday, Oconee dispatchers received a 911 call about a wrong-way driver in the area of the Ga. 10 Loop and Ga. 316, the Georgia State Patrol said in a statement.
“While en route, Oconee County advised that there was a single-vehicle crash east of the intersection on the Ga. 10 Inner Loop,” the GSP said. “As a GSP trooper responded to the scene, 911 advised they had received two calls that there was a pedestrian walking away from the crash scene, towards the Ga. 15/U.S. 441.”
The trooper went to that scene and saw a truck in the median, a truck on the right shoulder of the Ga. 10 Outer Loop and Thompson’s dead body.
The investigation revealed Thompson was the driver in the wrong-way crash, according to the GSP. After the crash, authorities said she left the scene and walked onto the highway.
Around the same time, Timothy Mark Rodgers was driving a Ford F-250 in the right hand lane of the Ga. 10 Outer Loop, the GSP said.
“The driver ... struck the female as she walked into his lane on a dark stretch of the roadway,” the agency said. “He stated that he did not see the female until it was too late to stop and he struck her when she entered the right hand lane. He immediately stopped at the scene.”
Rodgers, 56, of Lexington, was not injured, the GSP said.
Investigators have not determined why Thompson was walking on the highway.
“Bridget to me was not the kind of kid to be just leaving her apartment at that hour of the morning just to walk like that,” her father, Devon Thompson, told Channel 2. “So I just don’t know what really happened.”
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