Fatal Vehicle Crash Shuts Down Northbound I-75 In Cobb County

KENNESAW, GA — More than a dozen vehicles were involved in a fatal crash on Interstate 75 near Wade Green Road in Kennesaw Thursday morning, Cobb County Police Department said, causing massive traffic delays for seven hours and heavy traffic congestion.

One person was killed when the vehicles collided in the northbound lanes of I-75, Cobb police said. Those lanes were shut down north of Barrett Parkway after the crash occurred around 11:15 a.m. and did not reopen until about 6:45 p.m. Boniface Ndiangui, 58, of Marietta, was behind the wheel of a Freightliner hauling a semi-trailer and was killed in the crash, according to WSB-TV.

Seventeen vehicles were involved in the chain-reaction crash, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation. The crash happened as heavy rains swept across metro Atlanta.

“You could only see about 40 yards in front of you,” Chris Hill, a truck driver who saw the crash, told WSB-TV. “The truck to my right got rear-ended, broke the axles, destroyed it. Luckily, I didn’t get tangled up in that.”

Footage from the GDOT cameras near the accident showed smoke rising from a rig as multiple firetrucks blocked the interstate. Additionally, Hill said a white box van caught fire and the flames spread to a truck, then to an 18-wheeler.

Another driver, Billy Jay, told WSB-TV that a tractor-trailer jackknifed 100 feet ahead of him, causing him to crash into another car trying to avoid it.

“It pushed us over into a tractor-trailer and a guy hit us from behind and the fire started,” Jay said. “It was chaos.”