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TAMPA (Florida, US), Sept 25 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A family of six people including three children were killed after a train crashed into their Escalade SUV as it went over a railroad crossing in Florida.
The incident happened Saturday at a private crossing roughly 20 miles west of Tampa, where there is no barrier and only a stop sign warns of the chance of a passing train. It left five of the vehicle’s seven passengers dead at the scene.
The driver 52-year-old Jose Guadalupe Hernandez initially survived, but succumbed to his injuries overnight after being rushed to a local hospital.
Hernandez’s wife Enedalia, 50, and three children – Julian, 9, Alyssa, 17, and Anaelia, 22 – were ejected from the back of the vehicle upon impact and were all killed. Cops say the car ‘crawled across the railroad crossing’ but ‘never stopped to look both ways.’
Jakub Lopez, 17, who was a friend of one of the siblings also died in the crash.
Guillermo Gama, 23, Anaelia’s boyfriend who was a passenger in the front of the car, is the sole survivor and is in critical condition at Lakeland hospital.
Relatives on Sunday remarked how the incident ‘stole the lives of an entire family’, who had been heading to a party at the time of the crash.
‘On Saturday 9/23/23 my nephew Guillermo E. (Gordo/Doorbell) Gama III was involved in a fatal train wreck that stole the lives of an entire family,’ a GoFundMe started by Gama’s aunt reads.
According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office the crash was captured on camera, and the footage is being used to aid their investigation.
The Sheriff’s office said, the footage shows how the Cadillac approached the railroad crossing and ‘slow crawled across the railroad crossing, but never stopped, never stopped to look both ways.’
He added that ‘the train conductor did everything he could to slow this train down,’ signaling loud horns and flashing lights, but failed to avoid the vehicle.
A witness told deputies he honked his horn to get the driver’s attention, as he crossed the little-traveled crossing to bring the passengers to a birthday party located just across the tracks.
The SUV, the sheriff said, ‘flipped violently several times’ before it landed a distance away from the crossing – which has no barrier and only a sign indicating that trains may pass at any point.
The Sheriff said he and all the first responders are still ‘visibly shaken’ from the incident. — NNN-AGENCIES
