Crash on Interstate - Atlanta

Small plane crashes on Atlanta-area interstate, killing 4


Four people die in plane crash on I-285 just north of Atlanta

Plane clipped tractor-trailer, driver says; no motorists injured, officials say

Atlanta (CNN)Truck driver Gerald Smith glanced to his right and saw a small plane flying low and toward him as he motored along a busy Atlanta-area highway Friday morning.

Smith hit the brakes, an action he thinks saved his life. The plane's occupants couldn't save their own.

The single-engine Piper PA-32 passed in front of Smith's decelerating tractor-trailer and crashed on Interstate 285 just north of Atlanta, killing all four people aboard and severely snarling traffic on the bypass that encircles the city, officials said.

No one on the ground was injured, DeKalb County Fire Department spokesman Capt. Eric Jackson said, even though the plane hit the highway shortly after rush hour, at about 10 a.m.

"Whoever was in that plane, my heart goes out to their family," Smith told CNN Atlanta affiliate WSB. "Just a normal workday for me (is now) a day I'll never forget, because somebody's life was taken."

Grady Gideon Byrd told CNN that his son, 53-year-old Greg Byrd, and two grandsons, Christopher, 27, and Phillip, 25, were on the plane.

Christopher's fiancee, Jackie Kulzer, also was on board, according to the elder Byrd.

The four on board were headed to the University of Mississippi for graduation ceremonies Saturday for Greg Byrd's younger son, Robert, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger.

According to the Asheville Citizen-Times, Greg Byrd, the pilot, was a small-business owner there. Before that, he served in the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office.

"He loved life, he was adventurous. He really did a great job at the sheriff's office," Sheriff Van Duncan told the newspaper.