LAFAYETTE, Tenn. - Crews went door-to-door Wednesday searching debris for more victims of deadly tornadoes that ripped the roof off a shopping mall, pummeled mobile homes and blew apart warehouses as they tore across five states. At least 47 people were killed throughout the South.
The victims included 24 people in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and three in Alabama, emergency officials said. Among those killed were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old in Atkins, about 60 miles northwest of Little Rock. Hundreds more were injured.
The family died from trauma when their home "took a direct hit" from the storm, Pope County Coroner Leonard Krout said.
"Neighbors and friends who were there said, 'There used to be a home there,'" Krout said.
Ray Story tried to get his 70-year-old brother, Bill Clark, to a hospital after the storms leveled his mobile home in Macon County, about 60 miles northeast of Nashville. He died as Story and his wife tried to navigate debris-strewn roads in their pickup truck, they said.
"He never had a chance," Nova Story said. "I looked him right in the eye and he died right there in front of me."
The twisters, which also slammed Mississippi, were part of a rare spasm of winter weather that raged across the nation's midsection at the end of the Super Tuesday primaries in several states. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, candidates including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.
Union University in Jackson, TN had more than 50 students injured, including two critical. Forty percent of the student housing was damaged or destroyed and 1,100 cars belonging to students were damaged. With a daughter away at college and living in campus housing, this sort of story hits home.
And it's not over yet. There's still a very strong line of storms that will continue across much of the same area and the I-95 corridor today.
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