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Wreck on Alligator Alley kills mother of four

The Largo resident was in an SUV that flipped on the way to Miami on Friday. Three other people in the vehicle were hospitalized.

By VANESSA DE LA TORRE and JACOB H. FRIES
Published December 20, 2005

A 35-year-old Largo woman died Friday when the sport utility vehicle she was riding in spun out of control and flipped over on a stretch of Interstate 75 known as Alligator Alley, the Florida Highway Patrol said Monday.

No other cars were involved, a trooper said.

Celeste Louise Key had been sitting in the passenger seat of a 2006 Ford Expedition driven by her boyfriend, Willie James Jordan, 32, also of Largo, said Cpl. Robert L. Crouch. In the back seat were Jordan's twin brother, William, and his wife, Rosalind Roberta Jordan, 30, both of St. Petersburg.

They were heading east at 1:30 p.m. Friday when the wheels on the driver's side of the SUV clipped the median, sending the Expedition into a clockwise spin, Crouch said. One witness reported that the vehicle then flipped over as many as 10 times, he said.

"It was a violent crash," the trooper said.

The Expedition rolled over the shoulder and through a chain-link fence separating the roadway from the woods, Crouch said. It came to rest on the driver's side.

Key, who was wearing a seat belt, was pronounced dead at the scene.

The other three people, meanwhile, were taken to local hospitals with less serious injuries.

Rosalind Roberta Jordan remained in fair condition Monday at Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers.

Reached by phone, she said the group had been heading to Miami to visit relatives.

"All I remember is the car flipping over and over," she said. "The next thing I know, I am in a helicopter."

She described Key, an assistant supervisor at a debt management company, as a loving mother of two girls and two boys.

"She was a good person, a very religious person," she said. "She was always very nice."

Efforts to reach Willie James Jordan and Key's family were unsuccessful Monday.

Crouch said he was still trying to determine the precise speed of the vehicle, but it appeared to have been exceeding the 70 mph limit.

"That's a big question and awfully suspicious to us at this time," he said.

Crouch said deaths on that stretch of road have been increasing, largely because of speeders.

"Alligator Alley is the autobahn of the U.S.," he said.

[Last modified December 20, 2005, 01:50:22]