CAMDEN COUNTY, Ga. – News4JAX on Monday obtained the detailed crash report of a six-vehicle crash on I-95 in Camden County that resulted in the deaths of four people.
According to jail records from the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, Nicholas Burist, 43, faces four counts of attempted vehicular homicide, which the Sheriff’s Office said are expected to be upgraded. He also faces charges of DUI, possession of an open container, possession of marijuana, following too close and making an improper lane change.
The crash closed I-95 in both directions at St. Marys Road on July 1 for several hours.
According to the crash report, Burist, the driver of a semitruck, told investigators that he was traveling south in the right lane and that he was being tailgated. He told investigators the vehicle in front of him slammed on their brakes, which caused him to strike the rear of that vehicle and lose control.
The crash report, however, notes that Burist’s on-board dashcam shows no one directly in front of him. It states that the preceding SUV was “several hundred feet ahead of him and was not on the brakes prior to the collision.”
Two of the people who died, a 36-year-old man and 37-year-old man, were passengers in Burist’s semi, the report shows.
The other two people killed were both passengers in an SUV that was involved in the crash — a 14-year-old girl and a 43-year-old woman. The driver told police he was driving with his wife and daughter. His daughter’s friend was also in the vehicle, and hospitalized for treatment.
The report shows the SUV driver told investigators that the semi crashed through the guardrail and that there was nothing he could do to avoid a collision.
Another driver with four passengers told investigators he too couldn’t avoid the semi and struck the top of the overturned semi. Four witnesses told investigators they saw the southbound semi go through the guardrail into northbound traffic before overturning.