DeKalb County fire Capt. Eric Jackson said Allen’s vehicle careened off the road, down a short hillside and into another tree. The impact from the falling tree likely caused the postal worker’s death, Jackson said. Wind likely contributed to knocking the tree down, Jackson said, but the snow and ice that blanketed metro Atlanta earlier in the day were not immediately believed to be factors.
“It was really a freak accident,” Jackson said.
Allen, a DeKalb native, was described as a happy-go-lucky family man who was devoted to his wife and two young children.
“It’s hard. There’s no one to blame,” his uncle Nicholas Allen told Channel 2 Action News. “It really threw us for a loop. We don’t understand it. But we’re going to deal with it.”
