Advertisement

Florida Highway Patrol: Eight dead in Glades County church van crash

 
A worker, center, removes purses from a van Monday morning after it was removed from a canal at the intersection of U.S. 27 and State Road 78 W near Moore Haven. Eight people were killed and 10 injured when the church van ran through a stop sign, crossed all four lanes of a rural highway and crashed into in a canal. [Associated Press]
A worker, center, removes purses from a van Monday morning after it was removed from a canal at the intersection of U.S. 27 and State Road 78 W near Moore Haven. Eight people were killed and 10 injured when the church van ran through a stop sign, crossed all four lanes of a rural highway and crashed into in a canal. [Associated Press]
Published March 31, 2015

The congregants of a close-knit Haitian church gathered around Nicolas Alexis on Monday, hoping to learn what happened to 18 friends and loved ones who had been expected to return that morning from a late Palm Sunday service.

Alexis described how he frantically tried to check who was alive after their overloaded church van crashed into a canal in the darkness of rural south Florida.

Three men who had been seated near the 57-year-old died. Alexis said he kicked out a window to escape.

"I just know there is a God," said Alexis, sitting in a chair dragged outside the Independent Haitian Assembly of God to ease the pain in his bandaged leg and fractured ribs.

The crash early Monday in Glades County near La Belle, about 60 miles from the Fort Pierce church, killed eight people. Alexis, the church's pastor and eight others were injured.

The van crashed after the driver apparently missed a stop sign at an unlit T-intersection surrounded by farmland, sending the vehicle across four lanes and plunging through tall grasses into a shallow canal.

Eighteen people were in the 15-seat-capacity van when it crashed about 12:30 a.m. Monday.

"That's a very steep embankment, and they kind of did a nosedive," said Lt. Gregory S. Bueno of the Florida Highway Patrol.

The crash killed the male driver and seven passengers, four male and three female, troopers said. The Highway Patrol spoke briefly spoke to some survivors and will conduct more in-depth interviews, Bueno said. A full investigation will assess any mechanical issues with the van, he added.

All the people in the van were from Fort Pierce. They had been returning to the Independent Haitian Assembly of God after making a Palm Sunday trip to another church in Fort Myers.

The church's pastor, 57-year-old Esperant Lexine, was hospitalized in critical condition.

"He hasn't learned of the fatalities yet," Dina Lexine Sarver, his daughter, told the Associated Press.

Lexine founded his church more than 35 years ago, and half the people in the van were longtime members of his congregation, Sarver said.