The Florida Highway Patrol has given its account of Tuesday's fatal crash on Interstate 75 at Naples, and it revises the picture on the record overnight: two vans rather than a van and a box truck, a rear-end collision with traffic stopped ahead, and the driver who died was the one behind
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The Florida Highway Patrol has set out its account of the crash that killed a man on Interstate 75 at Naples on Tuesday afternoon, and it differs in several respects from the description that stood overnight.
FHP says a Chevrolet Express van driven by a 62-year-old man and a Mercedes van driven by a 28-year-old man were travelling in the center lane of northbound Interstate 75 near mile marker 111, about 200 feet north of the Immokalee Road overpass.
The Mercedes van was in front and had stopped for traffic ahead, FHP says. It says the driver of the Chevrolet van then failed to slow down and struck the back of it.
The 62-year-old driver of the Chevrolet van sustained serious injuries, was taken to a local hospital and was later pronounced dead, according to FHP. The driver of the Mercedes van was not injured.
What this changes from the earlier account
The account available on Tuesday came from the Collier County Sheriff's Office through Gulf Coast News, and it described a van and a box truck, with two people being treated for injuries.
FHP describes two vans, and one surviving driver who was not hurt at all. The person who died was driving the vehicle that struck the other from behind.
This desk reported the Tuesday account with the caveat attached at the time that the vehicle types and the injury count rested on a single newsroom's account of what the Sheriff's Office had said, and that only the death, the location and the timing were supported independently by the state's dispatch record. Those details have now been superseded by the investigating agency. A dated note has been added to the earlier brief.
What is still open
FHP says the crash remains under investigation.
Its description of the Chevrolet driver failing to slow down is the agency's characterisation within an investigation that has not concluded. It is not a finding, and no charge or citation has been announced against anyone. The driver it describes is dead.
Neither driver has been named by any agency. Nothing has been said about why traffic ahead had stopped.
The northbound lanes at mile marker 111 reopened on Tuesday evening, which this desk covered at the time. The road is not affected now.
One note on sourcing
WINK News does not carry a version of the FHP account. Its search feed was read on Wednesday morning, fifty items sorted newest first, and the story is not in it.
The FHP account therefore rests on one newsroom's report. The Florida Highway Patrol's own live incident board could not be read on this run, which is a standing limitation of this desk's tooling rather than anything new.
Where we read it: Gulf Coast News.
The document: No public filing has been released.
