CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — A young man’s life has been turned upside down and inside out after a frightening crash on I-75 in Clayton County. Dylan Whittemore, 20, managed to escape a mangled truck alive after a hit-and-run driver nearly killed him three weeks ago.
As Whittemore faces possible lifelong effects of brain damage from the accident, he’s asking for help to find the driver who hit him. His brain injury has caused memory troubles – but he does remember something very clearly.
“He just kept on going,” Whittemore said.
Whittemore was the passenger in his friend’s pickup truck, a Dodge Ram 5500. They were headed southbound on I-75 and carrying a large load just before midnight on March 19, when a semi-tractor trailer turned into their lane from the right. It crashed into the pickup truck, forcing Whittemore and his friend into the median wall. The driver of the semi-tractor trailer never stopped.
According to the Singleton Law Firm, which is representing Whittemore to try to identify the driver and his insurance company to help pay for Whittemore's huge medical expenses, Clayton County firefighters had to cut him out of the mangled truck and he was airlifted to the hospital. He spent three days in the ICU.
“Had it not been for the quick response of the Clayton County first responders, Dylan would not be with us,” the firm posted on Facebook.
“There’s no way that he hit them and tore everything up like he did and did not know it,” said Glenda Soky, Whittemore’s grandmother. “It’s rough. He’s my first-born grandson.”
Soky is caring for Whittemore now that he is out of the hospital. She’s worried about his future – and she’s fighting off her anger.
“He wakes up at night in terrors,” she said. “Sleeps two or three hours at a time, if he can get that.”
Police have not located the driver of the tractor trailer and no suspects have been identified. The Clayton County Police department is asking anyone with information about the crash, or anyone who witnessed it, to come forward.
“Come forward, just own up to it, you know what I mean,” Whittemore said. “I gotta live with this for the rest of my life. He don’t.”
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