HOMER - A tractor-trailer driver from North Carolina has been charged after striking a parked Banks County Sheriff's Office patrol car on I-85 then leaving the scene around 10 p.m. Sunday.
Sgt. Carissa McFaddin of Banks County Sheriff's Office said Deputy Sheriff Jason Layfield was parked in the median of I-85 at mile marker 154 and was operating stationary speed detection when a 2005 Kenworth tractor-trailer traveled off the roadway and struck the front end of the patrol car.
"Deputy Layfield was actually standing outside of his patrol vehicle operating the LIDAR prior to the collision," McFaddin said. He observed the tractor-trailer traveling off the roadway toward his vehicle. He attempted to escape the oncoming collision, but was unable to do so. Once the tractor-trailer struck Layfield's patrol unit, the patrol unit then struck Layfield, which threw him further down the median away from the crash site."
The truck, driven by 32-year-old Gary Lynn Patterson of China Grove, N.C., left the scene of the crash and was located later at Travel Centers of America at Banks Crossing by the Georgia State Patrol.
Patterson was charged with driving under the influence of drugs, serious injury by vehicle, striking a fixed object, failure to maintain lane, failure to report accident with injury, following too closely, and hit and run/leaving the scene of an accident.
The Georgia State Patrol is investigating the wreck.
Layfield was taken by ambulance to Northeast Georgia Medical Center, where he was treated and later released. He suffered non-life-threatening injuries, McFaddin said.
