Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 11, 1992                   TAG: 9203110264
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TORNADO HITS CHARLOTTE

Tuesday morning, tornado-laden storms killed six people, injured dozens and damaged more than 200 houses and mobile homes in four Southern states.

The North Carolina twister touched down shortly after 10 p.m. about a mile southwest of the Charlotte city limits, said Sgt. E.D. Mills of the Mecklenburg County Police Department. Officers on the scene estimated 10 homes were destroyed and another 40 were damaged, at least 15 of them badly, Mills said. One person suffered a heart attack and another sustained a back injury, he said.

Earlier Tuesday, widely scattered parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi were damaged by a series of squall lines that churned eastward across the region with tornadoes, thunderstorms, hail and drenching rain.

One storm struck near Meridian, Miss., killing three women, injuring 47 people and destroying or damaging at least 100 homes.

"I said, `What is that?' and my husband hollered, `It's a tornado!' and we ran out and jumped into a ditch," said Martha Waldrop, who helped treat some of the injured at a firehouse about five miles south of Meridian.

The squall then moved into western Alabama, killing a baby girl and a woman near Greensboro. Police chief Gary Bice said the infant's body was found a half-mile from her destroyed home. Her parents and a brother were hospitalized.

A storm hit the Muscle Shoals, Ala., area, killing a motorist who crashed into a fallen tree, and another struck at Montevallo, south of Birmingham. The Alabama storms injured at least 22 people.