6 injured in car crash

|Caleb Worrell, Jones County Fire Council

JONES COUNTY, Miss. - Early Saturday morning, a white SUV traveling South on Interstate 59 struck a guardrail before flipping several times down a large embankment.

At 3:16 a.m., units from Southwest Jones and South Jones Volunteer Fire Departments, along with emergency personnel from Laurel and Ellisville, were dispatched to I-59 in search of a one vehicle rollover. Because of the location of the vehicle, it was initially unclear as to where exactly the vehicle was after it crashed. One of the occupants of the vehicle, who called 911, helped emergency personnel locate the SUV by letting 911 dispatchers know that she could hear sirens and see flashing red lights. By 3:20 a.m., the vehicle had been located near the Sanford Road exit.

When units arrived on scene, they found the SUV several yards from the roadway down a very steep embankment under the Leaf River overpass on I-59, just feet from the water. Firefighters, as well as EMServ medics and a Jones County Sheriff's Deputy, did an excellent job securing and calming all of the victims, as they prepared to carry each one that wasn't able to walk on their own up the steep hill to a waiting ambulance.

According to an Emergency Medical Responder on scene, the vehicle contained six occupants - four adults and two children. The two children and two of the adults were believed to have sustained only minor injuries and the other two adults sustained severe injuries. All were transported by EMServ ambulance to Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg for treatment.

When the call first came through, it was believed that the occupants were trapped in the vehicle. However, this was later confirmed to be false

Emergency personnel were on scene for nearly three hours during rescue and vehicle recovery operations. One lane of the interstate was shut down for emergency vehicles.