Three people were killed Monday morning on a stretch of road in southern Osceola County known for deadly crashes.
Florida Highway Patrol reports three people, the driver and two passengers among six people riding in a van, died near the intersection of State Road 60 at Peavine Road, just west of the 441 intersection in Yeehaw Junction, around 6:30 a.m. Monday.
Just before 3 p.m., over eight hours after the crash, investigators cleared a road block that closed the highway in both directions.
Troopers say the westbound Chevrolet Express Van, for unknown reasons, ran off the road onto the right shoulder. The driver then overcorrected and traveled into the oncoming lane and into the path of an eastbound Dodge Ram 1500, and the two vehicles collided head on. Due to the impact, the van began overturning and struck the side of a Toyota Corolla traveling behind the Ram truck.
The van driver, a 52-year-old male from Miami, and two other male passengers were pronounced dead on scene. The other four passengers were taken to area hospitals, including HCA Florida Hospital Osceola as were the driver and passenger of the Dodge Ram, a male and female from Lakeland, who are in critical condition, and the male driver of the Corolla from Haines City who suffered minor injuries.
That stretch of State Road 60, which connects Florida's two coasts from the Tampa area to Vero Beach through the south part of Osceola County on just two lanes, has seen a number of crashes, including a January incident involving two semi trucks and another fatal that left two people dead in 2023. In the four-year period of 2020-24, there were 334 vehicle crashes, including nine fatal incidents, on the two-lane road.
The stretch from Prairie Lake Road in the west to Florida’s Turnpike in Osceola County, a distance of 19.3 miles, is under study by the Florida Department of Transportation for widening, in order to improve safety and address future travel demands.
