Bob Burns, the original drummer for the iconic 70s rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, was killed late Friday when he was involved in a single-car crash in northern Georgia.

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According to the Cartersville Patch the crash occurred late Friday night, just before midnight. Burns was driving northbound on Tower Ridge Road in Bartow County when his vehicle "left the westside of the roadway while approaching a right curve."

"After leaving the roadway, the driver struck a mailbox and a tree with the front of the vehicle," Tracey Watson, a spokesperson for the Georgia State Patrol, said in a statement to the media.

Watson also revealed that Burns was not wearing a seatbelt and that he was the only occupant in the vehicle. She also said that "it was raining heavily at the time of the crash," and there is no reason to suspect that Burns was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

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Burns helped form the legendary band when he was still a teen and played on many of the early demos and the band's first two albums, 1973's Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd and 1974's Second Helping (which featured some the band's best known songs, including "Free Bird" and "Sweet Home Alabama"). He left the group in early 1975, just as they were reaching the peak of their fame and replaced by Artimus Pyle. Lynyrd Skynyrd famously disbanded after a plane crash in 1977 killed three members, but it reunited (sans Burns) in the 80s.

In 2011, Burns reportedly revealed in an interview with the Examiner the previously unknown fact that he'd left the band for nine months in the early 1970s because his parents had moved from their Florida home.

"Yeah, I had no place to stay," he said at the time. "I was 15 and 16 years old, I was crashing in people's bushes. I was crashing wherever I could ...I was borrowing clothes from the roadies to play shows with. I didn't even have any shoes and it just got to me."

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