9 killed in violent storms in South

JACKSON, Ga. -- An enormous tree limb crashed through a family's bedroom and killed a father and the young son he had in his arms yesterday as a fast-moving storm system pounded the South with tornadoes, hail and spectacular lightning.

At least nine people were killed around the region, including several who died on roads made treacherous by downed trees and power lines.

Paramedics found Alix Bonhomme III, 4, wrapped in the arms of his father, Alix Bonhomme Jr., in a sight so wrenching that grizzled rescuers wept. Miraculously, a younger son in the room wasn't hurt, nor was Bonhomme's fiancee, Marcie Moorer, asleep in another room.

Moorer, still in pajamas hours later, said she still couldn't fathom what happened when the storm rumbled through Jackson, 45 miles south of Atlanta. Her son Iysic, 3, rode his tricycle around a relative's front yard as she looked on.

"I'm still in shock. It hasn't hit me yet," said a bleary-eyed Moorer, who was planning to marry Bonhomme in July.

The storms were part of a system that cut a wide swath from the Mississippi River across the Southeast to Georgia and the Carolinas on Monday and early yesterday. Drivers dodged debris during the morning commute in Atlanta, where one person was killed when a tree fell on his car.

The National Weather Service had confirmed at least eight of the nearly two-dozen possible tornadoes it was investigating in several states, though the damage in Jackson was blamed on 60-mph winds that weren't part of a twister.

In rural south Georgia, Christopher McNair, 45, was found dead under debris after a mobile home was ripped from its foundation by a tornado.

Ronnie Taylor, 56, a Colquitt County road worker, was killed as he drove to work when he struck a fallen tree in the road.

In Memphis, an 87-year-old man found dead in his home Monday was electrocuted by a downed power line.

In Mississippi, a 21-year-old man was killed when his car struck a tree that had fallen across a road in Copiah County.

In Georgia, prison inmate Robert Kincaid Jr., was killed during storm cleanup when a tree fell on him.