MURRAY COUNTY, Ga. — A tornado on Sunday night claimed the lives of seven people in one community near Chatsworth, Georgia. Among the dead was a woman named Rebecca Beck, according to her family.
She was inside a mobile home when the powerful storm swept through the community at State Road 225 and Redcut Road on April 12, her daughter said. The Murray County coroner said four women and three men died in that one community.
Across the state, at least eight people were killed in the storms. In Cartersville, a 34-year-old man was killed when a tree fell into his bedroom as he lay in the bed. More than 20 people were killed by the same storm system throughout the South on Easter Sunday.
In the Murray County trailer park, people in four different trailers were killed. Officials have not released their identities, but family members are beginning to share stories about their loved ones.
Rebecca Beck had been sheltering in place, her daughter told us. She and her roommate lived in a mobile home that was fastened to a brick foundation. The storm took her life, and the life of her roommate
For a while Monday afternoon, Gov. Brian Kemp was among those surveying the damage. Adding to the ongoing Coronavirus state of emergency experienced by the entire state, this community got what Kemp called "a double whammy."
"One guy told me there wasn’t any place he could go," Kemp told reporters. "They just had to make the best of a bad situation, but it is – when you look at these, it’s a miracle anyone lived through it."
11Alive was on the ground at the trailer park Monday afternoon and captured images of the damage. One trailer was lifted off the foundation and tossed across the street. A family was inside and there were no serious injuries, they said. Another trailer where one of the deaths happened was destroyed.
Survey teams from the National Weather Service said Monday afternoon that preliminary information allowed them to determine that the storm that hit Murray County was a tornado. Additional details regarding the strength and how long the tornado was, was still being compiled late Monday.
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