Gerrica Bowman,

17, Was In Crash

With Bread Truck

BY BILL JONES

STAFF WRITER

A Chuckey-Doak High School student who was seriously injured in a Monday afternoon traffic accident on the Erwin Highway died this morning at the Johnson City Medical Center.

Gerrica Leshea Bowman, 17, of Chuckey, was a senior at Chuckey-Doak High School.

A JCMC nursing supervisor confirmed about 10:30 a.m. that Bowman, who had been at the hospital since Monday afternoon, had died.

A THP dispatcher on Tuesday had identified Bowman as the driver of a car involved in a 1 p.m. Monday collision with a bread truck at the intersection of Tennessee Highway 107 (the Erwin Highway) and Chuckey Pike.

Bowman, according to the THP, had been flown from the accident scene by a Wings Air Rescue helicopter to the Johnson City Medical Center.

Bowman's passenger, Brittany Elliott, had been treated and released from Laughlin Memorial Hospital on Monday.

The bread truck driver, Scott Gilliland, 58, of Fairview, N.C., also was injured when Bowman's car pulled from Chuckey Pike into the path of the westbound bread truck he was driving, Trooper James Fillers said.

However, a Greene County Emergency Medical Services supervisor said Gilliland declined transportation to a hospital after being treated at the scene by EMS personnel.

Kathy Crawford, the Greene County Board of Education's vice chairman, said Tuesday that additional counselors had been sent to Chuckey-Doak High School on Tuesday morning to help students deal with Bowman's traffic-accident injuries and the unrelated Monday death of sophomore Johnny Alexander "Alex" Thompson, who apparently died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Crawford also said that Board of Education Chairman David Johnson had addressed the assembled students on Monday morning.

She also said that school officials had given Thompson's family permission to hold his funeral at Chuckey-Doak High later this week.