An Effingham County teenager has been charged in a car crash that claimed the lives of three people in September.

Rachel Conley, 17, of Rincon was booked on three counts of second-degree vehicular homicide, failure to exercise due care and improper passing on the left, according to Georgia State Patrol Senior Trooper Roger Cason.

Conley turned herself in Friday to the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office after her attorney was notified of the warrants for her arrest, Cason said. Conley was released the same day on a $38,700 bond.

The charges came after the GSP’s Specialized Collision Reconstruction Team concluded its investigation into the wreck. Conley was one of three drivers involved in the Sept. 7 crash on Old Augusta Road.

Megan Kessler, 30, a special education teacher at Effingham County High School, and her mother Marlys Strempke, 54, died at the scene. The driver of another vehicle, Karlie Miles, 19, died from her injuries three days later.

Ivey Castaneda, 15, a passenger in Miles’ pickup truck, was seriously injured. Conley was not hurt.

Conley’s Ford Taurus was behind Miles’ Dodge Ram 1500 pickup in the southbound lane of Old Augusta Road, according to the GSP. Conley crossed into the northbound lane to pass Miles.

As a northbound bobtail tractor truck approached, Conley attempted to move back into the southbound lane, the GSP report states. However, her car sideswiped Miles’ pickup, sending it into the path of Kessler’s Chevrolet Traverse in the northbound lane.

“It’s a bad situation all the way around,” Cason said. “You have a 17-year-old that’s going to have to deal with this the rest of her life. Of course, you have the victims’ families and everything they have to deal with.”

All of Conley’s charges are misdemeanors. She could receive up to a year in jail for each charge, according to Cason.

“There’s no intention involved in this crash,” he said. “That’s the biggest difference between a vehicle homicide and your so-called ‘regular’ type of homicides where somebody’s shot or stabbed or intentionally harmed in some way.”

Investigators do not believe alcohol or drugs contributed to the crash. A blood sample was not taken from Conley because “there was no reason to believe she was under the influence of anything,” Cason said.

Speed also does not appear to have been a contributing factor in the crash, Cason said, though the GSP’s initial report from September states that “several witnesses stated that (Miles) appeared to have sped up while (Conley) attempted to pass.”

Also, one of the witnesses to the crash, Bennie Allen of Albany, told the Effingham Herald that he saw Conley’s car traveling “at a high rate of speed” as “it was attempting to pass a red Ford pickup in a no-passing zone.”

“It was extremely close to the side of the red pickup truck and would not decelerate,” Allen wrote in an email to the Herald. “Shocked by what I was seeing, I shouted, ‘What are they doing?’ and pulled to the right side of the road to avoid colliding with it.”