A college student died “almost instantly” when a car part flew from the back of a truck on a Georgia highway and smashed the windshield of the car she was sitting in.
Autumn McClure, 20, was sitting in the passenger seat of her boyfriend Tyler Nunley’s car on the way to pick up her little brother from daycare on Wednesday when the brake caliper flew off the bed of a truck, her family said.
It struck her chest and neck, killing her “almost instantly,” her family said in a series of grieving posts.
“My beautiful little sister Autumn McClure passed away this morning in a tragic car accident,” her sister Simone Matherly wrote in a Facebook post.
“My family and I just can’t believe it,” she said. “It still doesn’t seem real.”
The bizarre incident occurred on I-75 in Ringgold, Georgia.
Police there are investigating the incident but could not release further details, WTVC reported.
A photo shared online shows a gray Hyundai with a gaping hole in its shattered windshield.
McClure, who lived her entire life in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, north of the Georgia border, died before emergency responders could arrive, her brother Collin Le said in a Facebook post.
“Please take a minute to call your loved ones or siblings,” Le wrote. “Also, those driving a truck with items in the bed, please take a minute to assess the potential risk of those items flying out and hurting others.”
McClure also had a twin sister, Ivy, and the two would be turning 21 next month. “I am lost for words, I love you and will miss you for the rest of my life,” Ivy wrote on Facebook. “You will always be my other half.”
McClure also leaves behind her mother, another brother, nieces and the “love of her life,” Nunley.
“Autumn, you were the most beautiful and spectacular part of my life,” her heartbroken boyfriend wrote in an Instagram post.
“I was always so happy to come home to see you, to hug you, to pick you up, to hear about your day, to hear about all your dramas at work and most of all to give you your daily foot massage that you loved so much,” Nunley said.
“I hope you watch over me and help me to be strong,” he added.
Autumn was the runner-up in the 2022 graduating class of Soddy-Daisy High School and was enrolled in a graphic design program at Chattanooga State Community College, according to a GoFundMe page organized by Le.
“As teachers, we’re not supposed to have favorites, but Autumn was one of my brightest stars,” Emily Bassett, one of McClure’s graphic design professors at Chattanooga State, wrote on social media.
“She had such a bright future and I was so excited to see her sweet face this Monday,” Bassett wrote.
In an online obituary by her family, she was described as a “sweet soul” who “touched so many people.”
“She was smart and caring and so incredibly clever,” they said. “There aren’t nearly enough words to describe the beauty of our girl.”
