A 9-year-old boy has died three days after he was struck by a pickup truck at a busy Athens intersection, becoming Athens-Clarke County's seventh traffic fatality of 2026. Maxton Ball, of Ellenwood, Georgia, was hit on the evening of August 8 near Lexington Road and Whit Davis Road and died at a local hospital on August 11.
Officers responded to the single-vehicle collision at approximately 9:07 p.m. on August 8, according to FOX 5 Atlanta, after a westbound 2018 Dodge Ram struck Ball as he entered the roadway southbound from a former Hardee's parking lot. Police believe the truck was traveling on Lexington Road when the boy got onto the roadway, according to Atlanta News First. Athens-Clarke County Police were called to the intersection that night and found Ball with serious injuries before he was transported to a local hospital.
Ball held on for three days before succumbing to his injuries, according to 11Alive, which reported he was a resident of Ellenwood. The crash remains under investigation, and no charges have been announced against the driver as of the latest reporting.
A Corridor Already Marked as High-Risk
The intersection where Ball was hit sits along a stretch of roadway that Athens-Clarke County has formally designated as part of its High Injury Network — a set of roads representing 18 percent of the county's transportation grid that accounts for roughly 85 percent of all fatal and severe-injury collisions, according to county planning documents. That designation places Lexington Road among the county's most dangerous corridors even before this latest tragedy.
This is not the first fatal wreck along the area in 2026. Two other deadly crashes occurred on nearby Whit Davis Road this year, per Athens-Clarke County Police Department press releases: a March 6 crash at Cedar Shoals Drive that killed 32-year-old Rochelle Jones, and a May 16 dirt bike crash near Pettit Lane that killed 28-year-old Worley Lorenzo Robinson. Just weeks before that, 66-year-old moped rider David Engel died on July 1 following a June 12 collision at the nearby intersection of Lexington Road and East Meadows Drive, the same station reported.
Sidewalk Project Already Funded for This Stretch
The exact stretch of Lexington Road where Ball was struck is already slated for pedestrian safety upgrades. Under its TSPLOST 2023 Program, Athens-Clarke County allocated funding for what it calls the Lexington Road Sidewalk Gap project, intended to build a 10-foot shared-use path along with continuous sidewalks and crosswalks between Cooper Road and Whit Davis Road — the very intersection where the crash occurred.
The county has also adopted a Vision Zero Action Plan pledging to eliminate traffic fatalities entirely by 2037, backed by a $1 million federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant and a proposed $3.7 million TSPLOST allocation earmarked for high-injury corridor improvements. Separately, an analysis compiled by local legal firm Norris Injury Law found that failure to yield is the most common contributing factor in Athens-Clarke County crashes, accounting for 37 percent of all recorded collisions countywide.
Athens-Clarke County Police Department records show the county has averaged roughly 12 traffic deaths per year in recent years, with a record 23 fatalities recorded in 2022. Ball's death marks the county's seventh fatal crash so far in 2026.
Investigators Seek Information
Senior Police Officer Lauren Barnard of the Athens-Clarke County Police Department's Traffic Safety Unit is leading the investigation into Ball's death. Anyone with information is asked to contact her by phone at 762-400-7222 or by email at [email protected].
The crash comes months after Hoodline reported on a fatal wrong-way collision on the GA-10 Loop that killed a pregnant woman and her husband, part of a string of serious crashes that have drawn scrutiny to Athens-Clarke County roadways over the past year.
