Five people, including at least two children, were killed, and two more were critically injured on Saturday after a freight train slammed into an SUV, police shared.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff, Chad Chronister, shared at a press conference that the unidentified family of seven was headed to a quinceañera at around 6:45 p.m. when the incident occurred in Plant City.
Video footage of the incident showed the Cadillac Escalade slowly approaching the train crossing, which was only marked by a stop sign and not by a railroad crossing sign.
The driver of the car continued to move across the tracks without looking both ways, resulting in a mile-long freight train slamming into the SUV at 55 miles per hour, Chronister said.
“The word devastating doesn’t begin to describe the events and tragedy that unfolded,” Chronister said at the press conference.
The sheriff shared that witnesses watching the tragedy unfold, as well as the conductor, attempted to notify the car that it was in the path of danger, but it was too late.
“As you could imagine, the carnage that’s created when these two collide,” the sheriff said. “The SUV — we can see from the video — begins to catapult and flip violently several times before it’s landed a distance from this crossing.”
The five passengers in the backseat of the SUV were ejected from the vehicle after impact and killed.
Among the dead were children, ages 10, 14, and an “adult child,” the New York Post reported.
The driver and the front-seat passenger were trapped inside the vehicle that Chronister said looked “like a soft drink can that’s been smashed.”
They were eventually freed from the car by first responders and rushed to a local hospital in critical condition.
The incident is still under investigation at this time.
“Maybe an entire family lost their life here tonight. We are all visibly shaken. We are all rattled at our core tonight after witnessing what happened here tonight,” Chronister said.