Deadly wrecks mar Thanksgiving holiday

Two women died in a crash Thursday morning near the intersection of Guess Road (N.C. Highway 157) and N.C. Highway 57 in Orange County, according to the sheriff's office.

The driver was identified as Susan Beasley Tamer, 39, of Williamson, Ga. Her mother, Jane McCrary Beasley, 61, of Brooks, Ga., was the passenger in the vehicle.

Investigators on the scene said the women were traveling in a Jeep which failed to yield to a small pick-up truck. They were hit broadside and the Jeep flipped, pinning both women, troopers said.

The driver of the truck,  Timothy James Whitfield, 23, was taken to an area hospital.

Tamer and Beasley were in Orange County for the holidays because Tamer and her husband planned to move to the county on Dec. 17, according to Highway Patrol Trooper Adam Kerr.

Ten people – four adults and six children – were involved in a collision at Graham Brantley and Broken roads in Nash County Thursday morning.

Troopers said the wreck happened when a woman driving a Toyota 4Runner drifted into the center of the road as she attempted a left turn. An on-coming second car hit the 4Runner head-on.

Eight people from the two cars were taken to area hospitals, troopers said. None of their injuries were thought to be life-threatening.

In Franklinton, a mother and her two children died Wednesday night in a crash near N.C. Highway 96 in Franklinton, troopers said.

Troopers said Melissa Jo Bullock Godfrey, 26, was driving west on Bruce Garner Road just before 10 p.m. when her car went off the road. She over-corrected into a ditch and her car flipped into a tree, troopers said.

Bullock, of 371 Stone Southerland Road in Louisburg, and her two children, Georgia Leigh Godfrey, 5, and John Wyatt Godfrey, 4, died at the scene.

Bullock was driving home after visiting her in-laws.

"They had just left. They had been gone about an hour," said Tony Godfrey, Bullock's father-in-law.

A family friend said troopers led him to believe that it was a freak accident that led to the crash. Len Pope said Bullock's family was distraught early Thursday and only beginning to understand what happened.

Pope said the family was grateful that the single-car wreck did not claim any additional lives.