Residents of Macon County, North Carolina, are still reeling from this weekend’s tragic deaths of two of their own. David and Dawn Head, of Scaly Mountain, died Saturday in a five-vehicle pile-up on GA-15 in Mountain City, Georgia. David Head was a deputy with the Macon County Sheriff’s Office. The couple had four children. As the community’s shock over their deaths settles into grief, those who survived the crash are struggling to cope.
Hannah Abercrombie, her best friend, and their husbands were on their way home after a day at the lake when they were the last car hit in the chain-reaction wreck. Abercrombie wouldn’t notice her own injuries until she was being pulled away from the scene by emergency services—she’d run from the car to Dawn Head when she saw her on the road.
“I didn’t feel anything, I guess the adrenaline was pumping, I don’t know. But I just ran straight to her and I got down on the ground with her,” Abercrombie said. “I won’t say the things that I saw, but I sat with her and I held her hand; I was praying over her and speaking to her and trying to tell her the things I think I would want to hear. ‘I’m here. You’re not alone. Everything’s going to be okay,’ And then just praying for help and praying to God that [emergency services] would get there quickly.”
What Abercrombie says was probably seconds felt like hours. “It felt like slow motion,” she said. “There wasn’t much I could do other than just be there with her. And I promised her I wouldn’t leave.”
She recalls not being the only person to run to the Heads. Another witness sat with David, who Abercrombie says was about 25 feet away from his wife, trying to provide comfort.
When emergency services did arrive, Abercrombie couldn’t leave Dawn’s side. “They were trying to get me to get up and walk away from the scene. I was just blubbering and in tears in that moment, holding onto her hand and telling them that I couldn’t get up and I couldn’t walk away,” Abercrombie said. “I was hysterical. I couldn’t walk away because I promised her I wouldn’t leave.”
She can remember her friends back at the car screaming for her to step away as emergency services pulled her away from the deceased, and as the adrenaline started to wear off, more of the realities began to set in. Abercrombie was bruised on both her left and right sides from the impact, she was limping, and she’d had surgery a month before. Her friends and husband were worried something inside her might have ripped open.
Her best friend, driving in her swimsuit, was covered in seatbelt burns that had begun to turn purple. Her friend’s husband cracked the windshield of their car with his skull. Abercrombie and her best friend left the scene in an ambulance out of an abundance of caution. “By the time we got to the ER, her arms looked absolutely terrible from the airbag,” Abercrombie said.
With everything that happened, all Abercrombie can hope for is the least amount of emotional pain for everyone affected in the wreck, the 22-year-old who caused the wreck included. “I don’t know what happened to him, and I don’t know why it happened, but there’s a loss of life there as well because I don’t think he’ll ever be the same.”
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