GRAY, Ga. — A Georgia College professor and her 15-year-old daughter were killed Tuesday afternoon in a head-on collision on Ga. Route 49 near the Jones-Baldwin county line.

The victims were identified as Jennifer Hammack, 44, a criminal justice professor at Georgia College, and her daughter, Erica Luca, both of Milledgeville, according to Jones County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chris Shurley, who also is a fatality investigator.

Luca was a homeschool student.

“Not only was it a fatality, there were two of them — a mother and daughter, and a father lost his whole family,” Shurley told The Union-Recorder in a telephone interview. “It’s terrible all the way around.”

Both victims died of blunt force trauma and were pronounced dead at the scene by Jones County Coroner Jerry Bridges.

The head-on collision happened shortly after 5 p.m., about one-tenth of a mile from the county line, Shurley said.

Hammack was driving a 2014 Hyundai Azera northbound toward Milledgeville when her car was struck head-on by a 1997 Ford F-150 pickup truck driven by Howard Massengale, 38, a resident of the Haddock community in Jones County, according to Shurley.

Massengale was flown by an AirMedCare helicopter in Milledgeville to The Medical Center, Navicent Health in Macon for treatment of assorted injuries, including a broken pelvis, the investigating deputy said.

“He (Massengale) was coming out of Baldwin County and entering Jones County,” Shurley said.

The deputy said he and a supervisory deputy will likely interview Massengale in a couple of days to get his account of what happened to cause the wreck.

The truck crossed over the center line into the path of Hammack’s oncoming car, Shirley said.

The car and truck were both demolished in the crash, which snarled traffic on the major highway for more than two hours.

In the bed of the pickup truck was a four-wheeler, the investigating deputy said.

“He may have been going back home from hunting, we just don’t know that at this time,” Shurley said.

The driver of a third vehicle, identified as a Milledgeville woman, who was traveling ahead of Hammock’s car, was forced to swerve off the road to avoid being hit by the truck, the deputy said.

“She left the roadway not making any kind of contact with the truck,” Shurley said. “All she did was kinda clip a mailbox. It just sort of spun the mailbox around.”

Shurley said the woman was not injured.

She and the drivers of two other vehicles witnessed the wreck.

Charges are pending against the truck driver, he said.

The wreck remains under investigation by the Jones County Sheriff’s Office.