HABERSHAM COUNTY, Ga. — The Georgia Department of Transportation is making major changes to a troublesome intersection after five people died in a fiery crash last month.
Channel 2 Action News reporter Bryan Mims was out at the Habersham County intersection on Wednesday where he saw three wooden crosses and stuffed animals along the roadside.
Nearly a month has passed since 29-year-old Avonlea Holtzclaw, the wife of a Hall County sheriff’s deputy, crossed into the southbound lanes of Georgia 365 at Mount Zion Road. Her children, ages five and six, were in the SUV with her.
A Corvette that Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell estimates could have been going more than 150 miles an hour slammed into them. Both cars burst into flames. The Holtzclaw family, and the two people in the Corvette, were killed.
Now, GDOT has plans to redesign the intersection and make it safer.
“They moved it up on the priority list,” Terrell said.
GDOT had been planning to make safety improvements to the intersection, but Terrell said last month’s tragedy added urgency to the project.
The agency is accepting bids until Aug. 21 on a restricted U-turn design. It’s the same design at a nearby intersection on Georgia 365 at Jaemor Farms that prevents drivers from crossing multiple lanes to continue straight or turn left. Instead, drivers have to first turn right, then make a U-turn in a designated lane.
Terrell said the new design has made a difference at that location.
“Since they have done that, it has changed the accident count there,” he said. “Granted, as long as people are driving cars, you’re still going to have accidents, but it cuts down on it.”
County records show 11 crashes occurred at the intersection between July 1, 2022 and July 20, 2023.
“There were two families that were altered forever – forever changed,” Terrell said. “And I don’t want that to be my family, I don’t want that to be your family, I don’t want that to be somebody else’s family because we allowed them to cross that road.”
The sheriff said work could begin in the next month and be completed by fall.