A jury in the small southwest Georgia town of Blakely, population 5,000 and county seat of Early County, returned a $26 million verdict for the wrongful death of an Ole Miss student.

Price Thornal was 19 when he was killed in Early County on March 29, 2013. He was driving home to Tallahassee, Florida, from the University of Mississippi in Oxford. He had left Oxford around 8 p.m. and was about an hour and a half from home when the crash happened at about 2 a.m. “This was a stellar young man,” plaintiffs attorney William “Bill” Stone told the Daily Report in an interview. “He had a bright future ahead of him, and it’s just a shame it was snuffed out the way it was.”