Two teens killed along deadly stretch of Macon road

A pair of teenagers died in a crash in the predawn hours Friday on a stretch of Zebulon Road where other fatal crashes have occurred in recent years. 

Alexander Floyd Strebeck, 18, was at the wheel of a Dodge pickup about 2:15 a.m. when he ran off the road and into a tree near Colaparchee Road not far from the Barrington Hall subdivision. Strebeck, of Forsyth, and his passenger, 17-year-old Landon Brooks Lawless, were pronounced dead at the scene, according to a news release from the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office.

Lawless, of Fort Valley, was ejected from the vehicle, Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones said. 

“The truck was wrapped around a tree,” he said.

The teenagers are not the first to lose their lives on that length of road on the west side of Interstate 475, not far from the Monroe County line. 

Two people died in separate, single-car crashes after running off the same segment of road in 2022.  

Cory McKenzie Mull, 17, was at the wheel of a Mazda3 compact car when he ran off the road and struck several trees. Mull, a senior at Mary Persons High School, died at the scene of the late night crash on Sept. 15, 2022. 

Months before Mull’s death, a 34-year-old woman at the wheel of a 2007 Honda Accord ran off the road and slammed into a brick mailbox and fence. Tiffany Fuller, a cosmetologist, was pronounced dead at the scene of the March 10, 2022 crash. 

Nearly eight years before the pair of deaths in 2022, 17-year-old passenger Abby Hinson was killed in a highly publicized wreck on July 23, 2014. The driver, son of a former Mercer University basketball coach, pleaded guilty to reckless driving and vehicular homicide and was sentenced as a first offender to seven years on probation.