atlanta — ATLANTA (AP) — A semi-trailer driver who was walking too close to a pickup truck has been arrested on murder charges in a fiery crash that killed three adults and five children on a Georgia highway, law enforcement said Tuesday.
Ken Aaron Hammock, 33, was charged with eight counts of second-degree vehicular homicide and one count of second-degree vehicular homicide, Franka Young, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Public Safety, said in an email Tuesday afternoon. Hammock was also charged with following too closely, failure to register and driver to exercise due care.
The victims were killed Monday afternoon, when the semi-trailer collided with a Dodge truck on Interstate 85 in Jackson County, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta, and burst into flames, according to law enforcement.
The identities of the eight people killed in the truck were not revealed. One of the women may have been pregnant, “but that will not be confirmed until an autopsy is completed,” Young said.
Hammock was arrested by the Georgia State Patrol and booked into the Jackson County Jail, records show. Jail records did not list any attorney who could be reached for comment on his behalf, and a message left late Tuesday with the local public defender’s office was not immediately responded to.
Four other vehicles also crashed in what officials described as a “chain reaction” after the initial collision.
A truck used by Furkids Animal Rescue and Shelters was one of the other vehicles involved in the accident. The driver of that truck suffered bruises and cuts to his head, according to CEO Samantha Shelton.
“In the chaos of the wreckage, cages were broken and cats began to escape,” the Cumming, Georgia-based animal rescue group wrote on its Facebook page.
The group was taking 37 cats to a shelter in Vermont, and some of the cats escaped after the incident, Shelton said. Two were still missing as of Tuesday, and one cat was hospitalized in intensive care, Shelton said.
The crash is being investigated by the Georgia State Patrol’s Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team, Young said. The National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating the crash.
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Golden reported from Seattle.