MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A twister roaring out of the darkness smashed through a small Alabama community early Wednesday during an outbreak of tornadoes across the Deep South, killing a 39-year-old woman and her 8-year-old son on a street where generations of one family lived.
One of dozens of tornadoes kicked up by a severe weather front that spent two days rolling from east Texas across several Southern states, the storm shocked people from their sleep in Flatwood, a sparsely populated community not far from the Alabama state capital of Montgomery.
In the early morning darkness, family members emerged from splintered homes to the sounds of screaming. Several homes in their community had been hit by falling trees, and a large pine tree crushed the bedroom of the mobile home where a father, mother and son were believed to be sleeping.
“The tree fell right slap in the middle of the bed while they were asleep. It fell on the wife and the kid,” family member Norman Bennett said of the victims.
The Montgomery County Sherriff’s Office said the victims were a 39-year-old-woman and her 8-year-old son, but did not release their names. A man, who is the woman’s husband and boy’s father, was injured and taken to the hospital.