The number of Jones County motor vehicle fatalities increased by two in 2025 over the number of deaths for the two previous years.
At the conclusion of December, the number of fatalities was six with two of those occurring during the last month of the year. Those deaths include two from pedestrian accidents and one death as the result of an accident on a side by side.
The first fatal accident happened Feb. 7 and took the life of 62-year-old Jerry Franklin Marlow of Forsyth.
That death occurred following a two-vehicle accident at the intersection of Cumslo Road and Highway 49, just before 9 a.m.
Marlow was driving a 1994 Ford pickup, and a passenger in the truck was transported to the hospital with injuries.
A March 8 fatality took the life of 13-year-old Rylee Baird.
The accident occurred at 7:27 p.m. as she was walking along Eatonton Highway just north of Industrial Boulevard. A report of the accident stated she was struck as she attempted to cross the highway.
Baird’s death was not the first in the area and has been the catalyst for an effort to put sidewalks along the dangerous highway.
A July 3 accident on Graham Road took the life of the driver of a 2020 Jeep Wrangler, 31-year-old Whitney Leah Davis of Macon, and sent all five of the passengers in the vehicle to the hospital with injuries.
A report of the accident stated that the accident occurred as the jeep was coming into a curve and collided with two power poles, breaking both in half.
The vehicle overturned, and all the occupants were ejected. No one in the vehicle was wearing a seatbelt.
Mya Deshon Brown, 24, of Macon, was killed Sept.
12 at the intersection of Gray Highway and Joycliff Road.
Brown reportedly stepped off the curb in into the path of a 2004 Ford Taurus traveling southbound toward Macon.
The accident occurred at approximately 8:30 p.m.
There were no further fatalities until Dec. 22, when Louis Michael Ryan, 78, was killed while riding his bicycle on Gray Highway near Braswell Lake Road. A Ford Escape and the bicycle were traveling south in the same lane when the accident took place.
The driver of the car stated she did not see Ryan or the bicycle until the accident happened. Ryan was pronounced deceased at the scene.
An accident in the early hours of Dec. 28 took the life of 31-year-old Allison Schwartz, who was a passenger on a side by side. The accident happened about two miles down Barron Russel Road at 2:30 a.m.
The driver of the vehicle was Zachary Taylor Schwartz. The report of the accident stated a tree fell in front of the side by side, and the driver could not stop. The passenger was ejected upon impact and was deceased at the scene.
The accident remains under investigation.
More information about the December fatalities can be found in a separate article on the front page of this edition.
