Fatal vehicle crash startles north Raleigh street

The north Raleigh road is hilly and curvy with large trees lining it. The speed limit is 30 mph.

Moments later, Edwards heard screeching, followed by a loud crash.

“I said, ‘Oh my goodness.’ So I ran over there, and it was mangled,” he said. “There was glass and debris everywhere.”

Edwards was the first person to see the driver. And he knew the worst had happened.

“We checked his pulse. There was no pulse,” he said.

Jonathon Gregory Taylor, 18, of Raleigh, was killed Sunday after the vehicle he drove crashed on Hunting Ridge Road near Tanbark Drive.

Police said Taylor, a 2014 graduate of Ravenscroft School, was alone in the car when he went around a curve, ran off the road to the left, struck a storm water drain and then a tree.

"I've never seen anything like that before,” Edwards said. “It was just awful.”

Investigators suspect he was speeding and under the influence of alcohol when he crashed, something that surprised Taylor’s friends.

Maggie Collawn, who was Taylor's prom date, described him as athletic, someone who “tries everything” and “pushes himself so far.”

“That's something that I don't think I ever would have heard in the same sentence, that he died in a car accident,” she said while sitting near a memorial at the spot where Taylor died.

A private remembrance ceremony was held at Ravenscroft Monday night.