MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — Freddie Taylor doubts he’ll ever forget what he and his fiancé encountered Sunday night about 12 miles outside Milledgeville.

It was one of the worst wrecks Taylor said he had ever seen.

“I’ve seen a lot of wrecks in my 19 years as a truck driver, but this was one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen,” said Taylor, referring to a head-on collision between an SUV and a car that killed two people and injured six others Sunday night on Ga. Route 49 near Pettigrew Road.

The wreck claimed the lives of Sharon Jackson, 47, of Milledgeville, and Kalvin Thomas, 48, of Macon, according to Sgt. David Holland of the Georgia State Patrol.

Baldwin County Coroner John Gonzalez pronounced Jackson and Thomas dead at the scene about 8:30 p.m.

An autopsy was scheduled for today at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Laboratory in Macon to determine the exact cause of death of the victims.

The deceased victims were traveling in a Nissan Sentra that was struck head-on by an SUV. The driver, identified as Daquarius T. Jones, 17, was described as being fatigued and may have dozed off before he left his lane of traffic and collided with the car, according to preliminary accident findings by state troopers.

The double-fatality wreck remained under investigation Tuesday by troopers with the Georgia State Patrol’s Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team (SCRT).

Taylor recalled that he and his fiancé, Bva Manson, both of Milledgeville, was the third vehicle behind the Nissan Sentra.

“We had gone out to eat at a restaurant in Macon for Mother’s Day and were driving back home when we came upon the wreck,” Taylor told The Union-Recorder. “Right past Colby Road, we came around a curve and we saw a lot of smoke.”

Taylor said he first thought some roadwork was being done.

But once he got closer, he realized it was a bad wreck, and that it had just happened.

“The SUV (a Yukon) was up on its side, and it was on fire,” Taylor said. “The fire was coming from the bottom of the motor.”

All six people in the SUV still were inside.

Taylor and Manson were just two of many motorists who stopped to render assistance to the wreck victims until authorities and medical personnel could arrive and assist those injured.

“We asked for a fire extinguisher from anybody there, but nobody had one,” Taylor said.

So Taylor improvised.

Taylor said he saw three bottles of water on the ground that apparently had been thrown out of the SUV during the wreck, so he picked them up and began dousing the engine fire. Another man, meanwhile, whom Taylor didn’t know, retrieved what appeared to be cat litter from his vehicle and threw it on the fire in an effort to smoother it.

“I got right down on the fire and together with what looked like kitty litter, we managed to put it out,” Taylor said.

The concern at the time was for the six injured people inside the Yukon, Taylor said.

“They were trapped in there,” Taylor said. “The man in the rear passenger’s seat couldn’t get his seatbelt off. The SUV was actually on one of the legs of a woman inside.”

The man inside the SUV was later identified as Zachary V. Harris, former head football coach at Hancock Central High School in Sparta and the newly named head football coach at Twiggs County High School in Jeffersonville.

A motorist who stopped to help gave the coach a knife so he could cut his seatbelt off and free himself.

“I pried the door open with my pry bar,” Taylor said, who also refers to himself as a maintenance man because he owns several rental properties.

Harris’ other family members, including his wife, Adrienne, 40, and the couple’s four children, including 17-year-old twin sons, a 13-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter, all managed to be pulled out of the SUV safely by passersby.

Taylor said his fiancé comforted one of the twins after he was freed from the wrecked SUV.

“A lady who lived nearby brought over some towels and blankets and she (fiancé) comforted him as he laid his head in her lap,” Taylor said.

The veteran truck driver said the wreck shook him up as well as the others at the scene.