Nine People Killed in Tennessee in Powerful Tornado System that Hit Region

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Nine people died in Tennessee’s McNairy County, east of Memphis, in the same deadly storm system that pounded parts of Arkansas and Illinois, according to Patrick Sheehan, director the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

“The majority of the damage has been done to homes and residential areas,” said David Leckner, the mayor of Adamsville.

Gov. Bill Lee drove to the county Saturday to tour the destruction and comfort residents. He said the storm capped the “worst” week of his time as governor, coming days after a school shooting in Nashville that killed six people including a family friend whose funeral he and his wife, Maria, attended earlier in the day.

“It’s terrible what has happened in this community, this county, this state,” Lee said. “But it looks like your community has done what Tennessean communities do, and that is rally and respond.”

Jeffrey Day said he called his daughter after seeing on the news that their community of Adamsville was being hit. Huddled in a closet with her 2-year-old son as the storm passed over, she answered the phone screaming.

“She kept asking me, ‘What do I do, daddy?”’ Day said, tearing up. ”I didn’t know what to say.”

After the storm passed, his daughter crawled out of her destroyed home and over barbed wire and drove to nearby family. On Saturday evening, baby clothes were still strewn about the site.

In Memphis, police spokesman Christopher Williams said via email late Saturday that there were three deaths believed to be weather-related: two children and an adult who died when a tree fell on a house.

Tennessee officials warned that the same weather conditions from Friday night are expected to return Tuesday.

Photo: A home in Covington, Tennessee hit by the tornado. (Patrick Lantrip/Daily Memphian via AP)