Sandy Springs police Friday were still trying to solve the puzzle of why Gayla Joyce Walker was walking along I-285 in Thursday's predawn darkness – and who the driver was that initially hit the 53-year-old Dunwoody woman, killing her and sending the top-end Perimeter into three hours of rush hour gridlock.
Sandy Springs police Sgt. Ron Momon told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution early Friday that while the initial driver that struck Walker has not come forward, “we have other drivers that called because they ran over debris after the person was struck.”
The question of why Walker was walking along the interstate is also dogging her family.
“What was she doing out there on that highway,” asked Phyllis Wilson, the victim’s sister. “We just don’t understand it. We don’t know why this happened.”
The first hint of a problem came just after 6 a.m. Thursday when a 911 caller reported a dead animal in the roadway on I-285 westbound just before the Roswell Road exit. When police went to investigate, they found that it wasn’t an animal, but an unrecognizable human whose body parts were scattered across multiple lanes of the busy interstate.
Authorities shut down all westbound lanes of the Perimeter at 6:35 a.m., and it would be three hours later before those lanes reopened. In the meantime, I-285 became a bumper-to-bumper mess that stretched more than 7 miles to beyond Spaghetti Junction, while eastbound traffic was jammed back to I-75 by onlooker delays.
The gridlock wasn’t confined to I-285, either, as authorities shut down the ramps from Ga. 400 to I-285 westbound, leading to drive times of nearly 90 minutes to get from Alpharetta to I-285.
Momon said late Thursday that a white pickup truck, possibly with a camper shell, was possibly involved in the incident.
He asked that anyone with information on the truck or on any other vehicle that might have been involved call Crime Stoppers Atlanta at 404-577-8477.
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