Alcohol and speed were likely a factor in a Sunday afternoon wreck that injured two Flowery Branch residents.

The driver, a 29-year-old man who has not yet been named, faces multiple charges once he is released from Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

The man is in critical condition after having to be cut out of his 1995 Acura Integra on Sunday. His passenger, a 28-year-old woman from Flowery Branch, was also treated Sunday for nonlife-threatening injuries at Northeast Georgia Medical Center.

Georgia State Patrol officials said the man was headed to the Gold Rush fall festival in Dahlonega when the accident occurred.

He was driving east on Bird Road shortly before 3 p.m. Sunday when, on a curve, his vehicle went into the westbound lane.

A trooper investigating the accident said the man then overcorrected twice before his car started spinning.

The vehicle hit a mailbox and a drainage ditch on the rear right side and went airborne, hitting a driveway before coming to rest facing the opposite direction, according to the state patrol.

Emergency personnel had to cut two doors off the left side of the vehicle to remove the man, the trooper said.

The man later had to be sedated so emergency personnel could put him on a hospital-bound helicopter. He is now being treated for what the state patrol officials described as a major head injury.

His female passenger told investigators she tried to keep him from driving. The woman reportedly suffered cuts and complained of neck and back pains on the scene.

The driver faces charges of driving under the influence, failure to maintain lane and driving on the wrong side of the road. He also will be charged for not wearing a seat belt.

In an earlier wreck at 3:30 a.m. Sunday just south of Murraryville on Ga. 60/Thompson Bridge Road, Arvil D. Case, 45, of Dahlonege, was driving north in a 2010 Nissan Cube when the vehicle crossed the centerline by Twin Oaks Lane and left the roadway on the west shoulder, GSP said. It then struck a culvert, rotated and overturned several times, ejecting Case.

Case was airlifted to Grady Memorial with a head injury, GSP reported. No charges have been filed at this time.