Traffic accidents over Memorial Day Weekend claims lives of three Northeast Georgia residents

Three Northeast Georgia residents are dead as a result of three different traffic accidents during the Memorial Day Weekend.

According to WNEG’s sister station WGOG in Walhalla, the first accident occurred late Friday afternoon (May 27) on Highway 76 near Thrift’s Ferry Road in the Long Creek Community of Oconee County, South Carolina.

The single vehicle wreck took the life of 39-year-old Alexander “Alex” Gardner of Clayton, Georgia.

WGOG also reports the second accident involving two pick-up trucks claimed the life of 72-year-old Chadwick B. Metcalf, Jr. of Toccoa, Georgia.

That accident occurred a little after 7:00am on Saturday (May 28) on Highway 11 at Hefner Road near Walhalla, South Carolina.

Three occupants in the other vehicle were injured and taken to a Greenville Area Hospital.  No word on their conditions.

As reported earlier this week, the final accident occurred on Monday (May 30) a little before 4:00pm on the Toccoa Bypass with another Toccoa man losing his life.

61-year-old Richard Cabe of Bryson City, North Carolina, was driving southbound on Highway 365 when he failed to yield at the red light at the intersection of Jeanette Jamieson-Dick’s Hill Parkway.

Cabe’s 1996 Ford Thunderbird struck the driver’s side of a Jeep, driven by 40-year-old Jake Boyd of Toccoa as it passed through the intersection.  Boyd died in the crash.

The Georgia State Patrol has since charged Cabe with vehicular homicide and failing to obey a traffic signal.

Cabe was taken to the Stephens County Jail.