On The Scene: Pictures and Eyewitness Accounts of Oxford Tornado Aftermath

Thursday, February 25, 2016
Oxford tornado
First-person accounts from a farm ravaged by Wednesday's tornado.

GRANVILLE COUNTY N.C. (WTVD) -- Dairy farm workers said they were milking cows on an Oxford farm when they saw something they'd never seen.

"When I went outside, I saw that there was a lot of wind and all of a sudden I started to see that a tornado started to lift up," Marcial Tirado said in Spanish.

"It touched the ground. At the bottom it made a little ring like this," he said, forming a circular shape with his hands. "Little by little, more and more, it became big."

According to the Granville County Sheriff, Brindell Wilkins, one house was destroyed and several others were damaged near the Henderson-Oxford Airport.

A car was also hit and the driver was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.



"It sounded like a train," said Thomas Marrow, a nearby Oxford resident.

MORE: Granville County residents recount tornado terror

"It started hailing really bad and then it just kind of quit and then the wind picked up and it started swirling," Marrow said, describing what he saw before taking shelter in a friend's basement.

"It was, it was pretty terrifying, but everybody is safe."

Even as one ABC11 crew was leaving the scene, hours after the tornado that tore it apart, the bad weather had not fully cleared out. Lightning was still zapping in the clouds that hovered above the destruction.

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