LAGRANGE, Ga. — A final incident report from Georgia State Patrol investigators has reversed the findings of which driver was at-fault in a May triple fatality that happened in LaGrange.
GSP names Rico Dunn, 24, as the at-fault driver -- not Jacob Brown, 19 -- in the head-on collision on May 14 in Troup County that killed Dunn, Brown and Brown’s passenger, Stephen Bartolotta, 18.
The two vehicles collided on Georgia Highway 109, west of LaGrange, just after 9:00 p.m. that Saturday, when, according to the state patrol’s updated findings, Dunn improperly crossed the double-yellow line to pass another vehicle, striking Brown’s car head-on.
The state patrol and Troup County authorities had said in the days after the collision that, according to witnesses and other initial evidence, it was Brown who was improperly passing another vehicle and crashed into Dunn, and 11Alive reported their findings then.
The Georgia State Patrol completed its final report naming Dunn as the at-fault driver on June 2, and 11Alive obtained it Tuesday.
The deaths of the three young men shattered all three families and countless friends.
Earlier that Saturday, Brown and Bartolotta were celebrating with the rest of the LaGrange baseball team, after, while playing at home, they won a best-of-three series with North Carolina Wesleyan that would put LaGrange into the NCAA Division III Tournament.
Dunn had spent the day with family at a nearby lake celebrating the birthday of Dunn’s sister.
“Real loving, caring. Very protective,” Dunn’s cousin, Bianca Ligon, said of him in May. “And would do anything for anybody.
Ligon said then she and her family were grieving with the families of Brown and Bartolotta, too.
“Everybody's hurting,” Ligon said. “I really do hurt for them... Especially with them being only 18, 19 years old. They’re still kids.”
Vigils and observances in LaGrange mourned all three.
LaGrange College President Dr. Susanna Baxter said the deaths of Brown and Bartolotta brought the campus community to a standstill.
“I knew them most from the baseball field and they were quite talented. But our students talked about studying with them, the partnership, the dedication, the work ethic that they put out on the field but also in the classroom," Baxter said, as teammates, classmates and friends were dealing with their sudden loss.
The car that Dunn was passing when he crashed into Brown’s car was damaged by debris from the crash. The occupants were, according to the GSP, a couple and their two children, ages 11 and 14, from Alabama.
