GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — All five victims in the early-morning Labor Day crash in Gwinnett County along I-85 and GA-316 were teenagers, police said Tuesday, and three of them attended Lakeside High School in DeKalb County.
Gwinnett Police identified the victims in a social media post as: 17-year-old Katie Gaitan, 16-year-old Ashley Gaitan, 17-year-old Coral Lorenzo, 18-year-old Hung Nguyen and 19-year-old Abner Santana.
Lakeside High School shared condolences for its students, the Gaitans and Lorenzo Tuesday.
They were all in a truck that went over the wall of the GA-316 skyway ramp to I-85, landing on the exit/feeder lane below that leads to Pleasant Hill Road.
Officers estimated it might have been as much as a 50-foot drop from the ramp to the lower roadway. Two other cars were involved in the wreck Monday morning, and three additional people were hospitalized.
There are still few details about how the crash might have occurred. It happened a little before 4 a.m., according to police.
"This continues to be an active investigation and we ask anyone with information to please contact pdaccidentinvestigationunit@gwinnettcounty.com or 678.442.5653," a GCPD post on X said.
11Alive Photojournalist Stephen Boissy captured images of a heavily damaged truck being towed from the site.
The involvement of the other two cars in the wreck was not fully clear. Police acknowledged there were indications at least one of the vehicles was hit or obstructed on the lower roadway, after the car fell from the ramp.
GCPD posted photos of the wreck scene on Facebook, giving a sense of the fall that would have occurred for the truck.