Culkin Volunteer Fire Department firefighters work with Vicksburg Fire Department medical personnel to remove Josh Moore from a pickup involved in a two-vehicle collision on I-20 Monday night. (Melanie Duncan ThortisThe Vicksburg Post)

[2/17/04]Wrecks Monday and this morning killed three people, including a high school student from the Eagle Lake area.

Warren Central freshman Jeradie Elaine Skinner, 14, 232 Belle Island Drive, died in the one-vehicle wreck today.

Skinner’s mother, Gina Shannon, 39, was driving Jeradie and her sister, Tara Collins, 12, to school in morning fog and apparently went through the intersection of Mississippi 465 and U.S. 61 North.

Their 2001 Chevrolet pickup crossed U.S. 61 and was partially submerged in backwaters of the Yazoo River.

The wreck was reported after motorists spotted the tail lights and called authorities at 6:19 a.m.

All three were taken to River Region Medical Center. “We’re not sure if she died on impact or if she drowned,” Warren County Coroner John Thomason said of Jeradie. He said an autopsy was scheduled tonight at Mississippi Mortuary Service in Pearl.

In the Monday wreck, a Jackson man and an Alabama man died and two others were injured on Interstate 20 just west of the Flowers exit.

Edward Gandy, 25, 7257 Tumbleweed Drive, Jackson, was killed when the Ford pickup in which he was riding was struck head-on about 5:20 p.m. by a Dodge Stratus, Mississippi Highway Patrol Sgt. Harold Dalhart said.

The driver of the Dodge, Jerry Wayne McKinney, 51, Route 1, Box 519, Rockford, Ala., also died.

The two injured were the pickup’s driver, Kenneth Carver, 32, 340 Arbor Drive, Apt. 2111, Ridgeland, and middle-seat passenger, Josh Moore, 27, no address available. Both were taken to River Region and moved to University Medical Center in Jackson.

Carver was in fair condition this morning, and Moore’s condition was not released.

The three in the pickup worked at Cal-Maine foods in Edwards, Dalhart said.

He said the wreck occurred after McKinney overcorrected after his Dodge collided with another truck, both traveling east.

The Dodge then crossed the median and the westbound lanes onto a hill on the north side of the highway before returning to the eastbound lanes and striking Carver’s pickup.

Traffic in one lane of I-20 East was blocked for at least two hours.

Emergency workers from the Vicksburg Fire Department and Warren County volunteer fire departments responded and helped cut the victims from the vehicles, a process that took more than an hour.

Jeradie Skinner was the second Warren Central student killed en route to school this academic year. Nic Townsend, 15, died Nov. 17 when the Jeep he was driving overturned on Beechwood Road.

At the high school today, Jeradie was remembered as a quiet girl who kept to herself, said Faye Thompson, a counselor at the school.

Jeradie enrolled in the school in September, after being home-schooled.