Two men died in a fiery crash Thursday afternoon on the Downtown Connector after the sports car they were in launched off the side of a highway overpass and shattered into pieces on the roadway below.
The victims’ identities were not immediately available, but they were killed upon impact, according to the Georgia State Patrol.
The pair, riding a yellow Corvette, were being chased at high speeds by Georgia State Patrol officers who tried to pull them over on westbound I-20 east of downtown Atlanta, Lt. Paul Cosper said.
The chase began around 2 p.m. when a state trooper spotted the Corvette driving wildly and weaving through traffic in wet and rainy weather. It ended about 10 minutes later on the Connector (I-75/85).
The Corvette cut across six lanes to take an HOV exit ramp to Piedmont Road. But the driver lost control on a curve of the ramp, hurtled over a retaining wall and crash-landed about 75 feet below on the side of the southbound Connector.
The impact turned the car into a flaming pile of blackened metal, with shards of debris scattered in every direction.
“If anybody had been [driving nearby], it would have been tragic,” Cosper said.
— Staff reporter Tim Eberly contributed to this story.
Jason Getz/jgetz@ajc.com
