A little before daylight Sunday morning a pickup truck crashed off Highway 79 North in Haywood County killing the driver and his three passengers. The wreck occurred near the Haywood/Crockett County line.

In a preliminary report issued yesterday afternoon, Trooper Houston Davis does not provide a cause for the crash but describes what happened.

The 2009 model GMC truck was travelling east, the trooper says, when it “swerved off the highway and struck a tree.” The truck “caught on fire while four of the occupants were trapped inside.”

Three of the four victims are from Bells. The trooper identifies them as Dallas Wear, 25, Candance M. Williams, 24 and Jose Vega, 26. John David Tart, 25, was driving the truck. The trooper says he was from Cunningham, Tennessee located in Montgomery County.

The wreck occurred about 6:30 A.M., according to the trooper’s report. The highway was closed for much of the day as the accident scene was cleared and investigators gathered information in an attempt to determine what happened.

Sources say the bodies were sent to Memphis for autopsy.