Cassidi Autumn Porter was 28. She died Monday morning on State Route 212 in Eatonton, Georgia, while her family was in the middle of a move. Her two little boys, 9 months and 21 months old, were hurt in the same crash. So was her mother.
The family was heading from Daytona Beach, Florida, to Conyers, a community in the Atlanta area. They never got there. “They were literally in the process today of moving from Daytona Beach to Conyers,” Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills said.
The crash happened around 7:20 a.m. Alisha Kaye Porter, 51, Cassidi’s mother, was driving the family’s 2025 Hyundai Palisade north on the highway. Steven Ray Reynolds, 51, died in the crash too. Four other people were hurt, including the two boys and their grandmother.
The children and their grandmother were taken to Atrium Health Navicent Medical Center in Macon. Sills said the boys’ injuries did not look life-threatening at first. He added that he did not know how bad they really were. Alisha Porter was hurt more seriously, he said.
Here is how the sheriff says it unfolded. A vehicle pulling a boat on a trailer was stopped in the southbound lane. The driver was waiting to turn onto Twin Bridges Road. He was letting the Hyundai go by first.
Then a 2005 Chevrolet Silverado came up behind him. The driver, 19-year-old Elijah Brooks Malcom of Good Hope, pulled around the stopped vehicle and hit the Hyundai head-on. “He was basically waiting for the Hyundai to come by when (Malcom) for whatever reason came around the man who was waiting to turn, and hit the Porters’ car head-on,” Sills said. “And that’s according to three witnesses at the scene.”
The boat trailer was not hit. Its driver was not hurt. Malcom left the scene in a private vehicle to get medical care, and the sheriff said he did not know how badly Malcom was hurt. Sills said Malcom will be charged with misdemeanor homicide by vehicle.
Eatonton sits in Putnam County, in Georgia’s Lake Country region. It is southeast of Atlanta and northeast of Macon. For now, Cassidi Porter’s sons and mother are still being treated in Macon, and the full list of their injuries is not yet known.
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