COWETA COUNTY, Ga. — A Coweta County father of two died Tuesday night when a tree came crashing down onto his car during storms.
Larry Adornato's wife told Channel 2's Rikki Klaus it's still hard to believe since it happened so suddenly.
“It just doesn’t seem real,” Melissa Adornato said.
Adornato spoke with Klaus by phone Wednesday night from Alabama. Her husband of 23 years was driving down Sargent Main Street in Sargent when deputies say the large oak fell onto his work van.
Witnesses say it was storming at the time.
“I was in the house watching TV and heard a big crash of lightning, and then I heard a big boom,” said Dana Bettencourt.
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She says she hurried out of her house and saw the van covered in branches.
“Somebody just blood-curdling scream. I'll never forget it. It was horrible,” she said.
Deputies say there was one passenger in the Chevy Astro -- a teenager with a broken leg who was found lying in the ditch.
Bettencourt suspected the worst for the driver.
“We knew that he was gone. There was a huge trunk in the windshield, and it took them about four hours to get the coroner here,” she said.
Melissa told Klaus it's tragic their children, 19-year-old Alex and 14-year-old Elizabeth, will miss out on milestones with their dad.
“He will just be greatly missed because the kids will not be able to have those special moments with their dad, and of course he won't be able to experience those either. My son will be graduating college, and he won't have his dad there,” she said.
Melissa Adornato also mentioned her daughter's high school graduation.
She says her husband was an electronics engineer for the federal aviation administration for 24 years and an electrician on the side.
Cox Media Group
