A serious ATV crash that happened in Cherokee County, Alabama, over the holiday weekend claimed the lives of a couple and also injured seven children.
Per FOX 5 Atlanta, the deceased parents were identified as Marcus Ragland, a 34-year-old father of ten, and his girlfriend, Ashley Brooke Hawkins, with whom he shares two children.
“I don’t even know how to feel,” Audrey Dunn, who also shares two kids with Ragland and is expecting their third child, told the news outlet, adding that the deceased man had come for her 1-year-old and 5-year-old for the holiday weekend.
“I get on Facebook and that’s when I see that he had passed,” Dunn continued. “And I couldn’t find my kids, because they were in the accident.”
The fatal incident occurred at the Indian Mountain ATV Park. The Cherokee County Alabama Emergency Management Agency said that a side-by-side ATV with nine occupants was in motion when it crashed with a different vehicle. The ATV subsequently overturned and struck a tree.
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Ragland succumbed to his injuries at the scene, and his family said he was driving the ATV at the time of the crash. Hawkins, 31, on the other hand, was airlifted to a hospital where she died later. Three of the children were also airlifted to a hospital, while the remaining four were taken to a health facility by road. The seven children survived the crash, and Dunn’s two children were among the four kids who had so far been discharged at the time of this report, FOX 5 Atlanta reported.
“My 1-year-old is limping, and his face is scratched up pretty bad, [my other son] has a gash on the top of his head, but he’s okay, so thank God the babies are okay,” Dunn said.
Officials said that the passengers involved in the crash had not fastened their seat belts at the time of the incident. Rules from Indian Mountain ATV Park stipulate that “everyone must wear their seat belt/safety harness at all times while in the vehicle.”
