Two men lost their lives and two others were injured when a tree fell on their pickup as they traveled Pea Ridge Road around 6:15 Friday morning.
Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said 24-year-old Logan Christopher Deal and 25-year-old Jakob Hogan Tapley, both of Ellabell, Georgia, had already died when emergency rescue personnel arrived on the scene.
Lucas Zane Dyal, 25, also of Ellabell, was driving the 2023 Toyota four-door pickup westbound on Pea Ridge Road. As he approached the intersection of U.S. Hwy. 441, a large oak tree fell across the roadway. It landed directly on the cab of the vehicle, Sills said.
Dyal and front-seat passenger Tyler Leif Meeks, 25 also of Ellabell, were injured and taken by ambulance to Atrium Health Navicent Medical Center in Macon for treatment.
Sills noted that the oak tree was still quite healthy and showed no signs of decay inside the trunk when crews cut it to remove it from the roadway.
“Evidently the ground was just saturated and it uprooted,” he said. “There’s nothing anybody could’ve done to prevent it. The same thing was happening all over the county yesterday and this morning; we’ve had trees down everywhere from this storm.”
The men were staying on Lake Sinclair in a short-term vacation rental home, according to Sills.