After a fiery crash on a Florida highway on Thursday involving two semi-trucks and at least two passenger vehicles five children bound for Disney World are among the seven dead, according to Florida Highway Patrol.
FHP officials said in a press release that the crash began when a semi-truck and a passenger vehicle traveling northbound collided.
According to the press release, after the collision, both vehicles crashed through the guardrail into the southbound lanes. That’s when a second semi-truck and a passenger van, both southbound, collided with the first semi-truck. The van overturned, ejecting some occupants, and both trucks caught on fire.
Five of the children, ranging from about 8 to teenagers – from a Pentecostal church in Marksville, Louisiana – and the two truck drivers died. At least eight others were injured, some seriously.
“It is a heartbreaking event,” Lt. Patrick Riordan said Friday. Identities of the victims have not been released, but the children were from the Avoyelles House of Mercy. Church officials did not immediately respond to phone calls.
The accident occurred on a clear day along a straight, flat stretch of Interstate 75 outside Gainesville, the home of the University of Florida.
The cause of that crash remains under investigation.