Five people are dead after a wreck on a busy northeast Georgia highway.

State troopers say Avonlea Holtzclaw of Dahlonega was trying to cross U.S. 23 in a Ford Explorer Sunday afternoon when a driver going northbound hit her. The wreck happened near Alto in Habersham County.

Holtzclaw, 29, died in the wreck as did two children in her SUV, ages 5 and 6. Mitchell Boggs, a 58-year-old Marietta man who was driving a Chevrolet Corvette southbound, also died, as did an unnamed passenger.

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Both vehicles caught fire, and all the occupants of the vehicles died before they could be taken to a hospital.

The fiery crash shut down the highway, a major artery between the north Georgia mountains and Gainesville, for nearly five hours.