Ledger photo / TIM GULLA Photos show the twisted wreckage of a Buick involved in a head-on collision Tuesday afternoon on Chesnee Highway about a mile north of the Old Post intersection. The 92-year-old driver died early Wednesday. There was no word on two passengers in the vehicle. The driver of another vehicle, Ernest Burr Jr., 56, died en route to the hospital. A detour had to be set up to divert traffic around the accident scene via Cherokee National Highway. The stretch of Highway 11 where the accident occurred was closed from about 5:20 p.m. until about 8 p.m. Sabbrinia Dunham's ride home on Chesnee Highway is almost always uneventful.

On Tuesday afternoon, however, she found herself sitting beside the road, nursing a sore neck and back, and thinking about what had just transpired before her eyes.

A few feet away from Dunham's damaged Ford sport utility vehicle, a much smaller Honda sedan had been reduced to twisted steel. A few more feet away, a Buick sedan shared a similar fate. A few hundred feet away, two medical helicopters were chopping up the air with their rotors.

A head-on collision that occurred at about 5:05 p.m. Tuesday led dozens of emergency workers to the scene.

Two people were confirmed dead and three others — including Dunham — were sent to area hospitals for treatment.

Cherokee County Coroner Dennis Fowler said 56-year-old Ernest Burr Jr., of Cherokee Ridge Road, was pronounced dead while en route to Upstate Carolina Medical Center.

Fowler said 92-year-old Corine Tarver of Gaffney died at 4:37 a.m. Wednesday at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center.

Cpl. Bryan McDougald of the South Carolina Highway Patrol said Burr was the driver of a 1996 Honda Accord headed north on Highway 11 when, for unexplained reasons, he veered into the southbound lane of the two-lane highway and sideswiped a Chevrolet Cavalier driven by Jimmy Bowers of Campobello.

Burr's vehicle then struck a southbound Buick sedan, driven by Tarver, almost head-on. Tarver was was airlifted to the Spartanburg hospital.

There was no immediate word on the conditions of two passengers in Tarver's vehicle, William Wyatt, 70, and Irene Wyatt, 71, of Old Post Road, who were taken from the scene by ambulance.

After the head-on collision, Burr's vehicle and Dunham's Ford Explorer collided.

Chief Reggie Petty of the Cherokee Creek Volunteer Fire Department said the drivers of the Honda and the Buick, later identified by the Highway Patrol as Burr and Tarver, both had to be extricated from their vehicles with hydraulic tools. The two passengers in Tarver's vehicle were not trapped, Petty said, but they were injured.

Dunham, who witnessed the crash, said she was headed north on Highway 11 and was following the driver of the Honda. Before they had reached the Old Post intersection, she said the driver of the Honda was weaving back and forth.

She didn't know what the problem was, but said the driver of the Honda began driving normally again after the Old Post intersection.

Less than a mile down the road, however, in the 1500 block of Chesnee Highway, the driver of the Honda suddenly veered into the southbound lane, Dunham said. She saw the Honda sideswipe an oncoming car, later identified as belonging to Bowers, and then collided with the Buick, which Dunham said tried to get out of the way by turning to the right side of the road.

Following the head-on collision with the Buick, the Honda then spun around in the roadway and impacted with her car as she tried to veer towards a ditch on the right side of the roadway in her lane of travel.

"One car did it all," she said.

Referencing the mangled wrecks behind her SUV where emergency workers had to cut apart vehicles to get to the trapped occupants, she said, "Believe me, I'm glad I'm not in a little car."

She said she tried to get out of her vehicle after the wreck but felt woozy and weak and an unidentified man came over to assist her. "My stomach's probably going to be hurting me tomorrow," she said.

Like Dunham, Chief Petty also was driving home on Highway 11 when he came upon the accident scene just a few moments after it happened.

He immediately ran to check for injuries while calling for Grassy Pond Volunteer Fire Department members to assist his own crews that were being dispatched to the scene.

"It was one of the worst (accidents) I've seen," the chief said. "It's a bad thing when you live in the area. You're always thinking it's somebody you know. That's one of the worst parts about it."

Petty said the straight stretch of roadway isn't known as a trouble spot for emergency workers.

"We hadn't had any wrecks there," he said. "That's the first one."

Two medical helicopters were dispatched to the scene, landing in a field about 200 yards away from the crash site. It was unclear Tuesday afternoon exactly how many patients were transported by air.

The South Carolina Highway Patrol arrived at the scene shortly after the crash occurred. Cpl. McDougald said the accident remained under investigation.

Fowler said Burr and Tarver are the 15th and 16th traffic fatalities in Cherokee County this year, and the third and fourth in the past nine days.