Cherokee County

15-year-old Cherokee County girl dies in accident while visiting family

By Ben Brasch, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Saline County Sheriff Roger Soldan says Taylor Patterson, of Woodstock, Georgia, died Sunday when she lost control of the vehicle on a country road. Soldan says it's unclear why she lost control of the vehicle.

By Ben Brasch, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. — Taylor Patterson wanted to be one of the ladies.

She would ask her mother for Starbucks coffee and to get her nails done. She wanted in on the chats between the women in their 20s and 30s at East Cobb Pediatrics where her mom worked.

Jennifer Bales has worked at the office with Taylor’s mom for 15 years -- as long as Taylor had been alive. She said Taylor, as a girl, would ask women for their shoes so she could walk around in them.

But Taylor will never be one of the ladies.

She died Sunday when she crashed an off-road utility vehicle, known as a UTV or side-by-side, in Kansas while visiting family.

Taylor was operating the 2017 Can-Am Maverick with a 60-year-old man as a passenger when she lost control on a gravel road and the UTV flipped at 4:45 p.m., said Capt. Jim Hughes, of the Saline County Sheriff’s Office in north-central Kansas.

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He said a preliminary investigation shows she wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Taylor was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Hughes said a passerby reported the overturned UTV. The passenger was able to crawl from underneath the vehicle and was not seriously injured.

Some Maverick models can weigh about 1,300 pounds, according to the Can-Am website.

Saline County has about 55,000 people, according to the U.S. Census, and is 160 miles west of Kansas City.

Taylor had just wrapped up her freshman year at Woodstock High School and was in Kansas with her mother Stephanie Patterson for a family member’s birthday, Bales said.

Patterson has been a manager at the medical practice’s Johnson Ferry Road location for the last 25 years.

“We’re more like family really than just co-workers,” Bales said.

She said Taylor was excited to start working part-time as a hostess with her older sister. The family was looking at getting a car for Taylor.

A family friend started a GoFundMe account with a goal of $5,000 on Monday, but it had raised more than $18,000 as of Wednesday morning.

“I want her to be able to do with her baby what she wants with her baby,” Bales said through tears, “ ... get the casket she wants and get the balloons she wants.”

This article was written by Ben Brasch, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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