State: Straying bus collides with truck, killing 6 farm workers

WAUCHULA -- Just before dawn Wednesday, on a shoulderless stretch of State Road 62 in Hardee County, where one lurch, one miscalculation, can result in disaster, a converted school bus carrying 23 farm workers plodded eastward through the fog toward a citrus grove in Parrish.

Traveling west past orange groves and cow pastures heavy with dew was Laddy Harrell, driving a Mack truck with a flatbed trailer bearing liquid nutrients. A 10-year veteran of Chemical Dynamics in Plant City, where he began his morning, he was planning to make a drop off at a citrus farm in Wauchula.

Shortly after 6:30 a.m., citrus farmer Jimmy Criss, 35, who was putting his two children in the car on a nearby dirt road, heard the impact.

"It sounded just like the sonic boom of the space shuttle coming in," he said. Moments later, when he arrived on the scene, he found a Pandemonium: body parts on the shoulder, a group of dazed and disoriented Hispanic farm workers, Harrell's semitrailer truck planted in a citrus grove and leaking diesel fuel, and a sheriff's deputy who was so overwhelmed he didn't know at first whether to direct traffic or help the injured.

"It was a damned nightmare," Criss said. "There were people everywhere."

Six men in the bus were killed, including the driver, who steered over the center line for reasons unknown, said Sgt. Vent Crawford of the Florida Highway Patrol. There were reports the driver had fallen asleep, but Crawford said, "there's no evidence of that, and I don't know if it will ever be known if that's a fact."

Eight passengers received minor injuries and were treated at Florida Hospital of Wauchula and released. Another nine workers were uninjured.

They had begun their early morning trek in Avon Park, about 30 miles to east. Most of the passengers were asleep at the time of crash 6 miles west of Wauchula, authorities said.

Harrell, 49, was taken to the hospital as well but was released Wednesday afternoon. Showing a slight limp, he returned to the scene Wednesday, somberly inspecting the remains of the rig he had steered through the pre-dawn nightmare. His truck sheered off the left side of the bus, then side-swiped a sport utility vehicle traveling behind the bus before leveling five orange trees on the north side of the road.

A piece of debris hit a small pickup truck, slightly injuring its driver.

"He said he saw the bus veering over in his lane, and had he not done what he did (running it into the grove), he would have run into a whole line of traffic," said W.B. Carson, chairman of Chemical Dynamics, who drove to the scene and spoke for Harrell.

Carson added: "We feel very strongly about the families of the victims, and our hearts go out to them."

Most of the bus passengers were asleep at the time of the impact, Crawford said. Authorities were working late Wednesday to identify the victims and planned to release their names today.

But Keelie Deloera, co-owner of a Wauchula company that formerly owned the bus, identified the driver as Dario Martinez, a veteran driver who lives in Avon Park with his wife and two children. At Martinez' home Wednesday night, the lawn and driveway were filled with cars and vans of mourners. A man who identified himself as Martinez' brother declined to comment.

Martinez, 32, was not wearing a seat belt, according to the highway patrol. Harrell was.

The U.S. Department of Labor sent two investigators to the scene Wednesday morning. Their mission: to see whether the bus was properly insured, if it had proper safety inspections and if the labor contractor and the driver were properly licensed.

"Field workers frequently are transported long distances," said Lisa Butler, managing attorney for Florida Rural Legal Service's Farm Works Project office in Immolalee.

"This is one reason why the farm workers and field workers have the highest death rate of any group of workers in the country," she said. "It's a chronic problem in Florida. We've had a steady string of fatal accidents."

The federally funded rural legal service serves all Florida-based migrant farm workers in cases arising in Florida and the eastern United States.

The accident in Hardee County Wednesday is the latest in a long string of fatal wrecks involving migrant farm workers. The six deaths are the most in a single accident involving farm workers since seven sugar cane workers were killed in October 1991.

By Lenz' count, Wednesday's collision was the fifth accident involving migrant farm workers in little more than a month in the west-central Florida region.

"This is the most I've heard of in such a short period of time," Lenz said. "It seems to come in streaks."

Lenz said that many of the accidents happen early in the year: farm workers are picking citrus, it is frequently foggy in central Florida, and there are more tourists on the roads.

Farm workers toil in one of the nation's four most dangerous occupations, according the the U.S. Department of Labor's National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, which noted in 1999 that two-fifths of fatally injured workers under 18 were killed while doing farm work.

Highway crashes were the leading cause of on-the-job deaths for that year.

The bus in Wednesday's crash is owned by Florida Harvesters, a Lakeland citrus company. Officers for the company could not be reached late Wednesday.

The bus -- white with black trim -- was taken to a local scrap yard, where its contents were plainly visible from the outside. They included several items the crew would need during a long day of picking -- 2-liter bottles of soft drinks, cone-shaped water cups and, in one seat, a round Tupperware container with the lid still on. Inside, someone's uneaten lunch lay on a seat, still wrapped in foil.

- Times Staff Writers David Dahl and Robin Mitchell contributed to this report.

Migrant farm worker fatalities

The six deaths in Hardee County on Wednesday are the latest in a long string of fatal wrecks involving migrant farm workers in Florida. A tally by the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that from January 1990 to April 1996, there were 59 traffic accidents involving migrant workers employed by labor contractors, including 23 involving fatalities.

March 4, 2000: Four migrant workers killed and five injured when a van veered off Buckeye Road, northwest of Parrish in Manatee County. Many of the workers, originally from Guatemala, were living in Wimauma in Hillsborough County.

February 1999: An 18-wheel truck struck a van carrying 17 migrant workers in Parrish, killing two of the van's passengers, critically injuring one and sending 13 more to nearby hospitals. The truck's driver was cited for running a stop sign. The sixteen passengers inside the van sat on seats that were unsecure and makeshift.

March 1995: Three migrant farm workers killed and three others injured after a crash that threw them from their van west of St. Augustine. The driver lost control of the vehicle, which was traveling 80-100 mph. The van struck a power pole and a tree before overturning.

October 1991: Seven Guatemalan sugar cane workers, including a 15-year-old boy, killed while on their way to work at sugar cane fields operated by Okeelanta Corp. They died trying to claw their way out of their car after it flipped into a western Palm Beach County canal. It led to a $5.6-million lawsuit settlement, at the time the largest amount awarded under migrant protection laws.

January 1990: Ten migrant farm workers die as they fight to escape a van that plunged into a canal after veering off a fog-shrouded road near Clewiston. The driver had a suspended license.

May 1963: The worst single-vehicle accident in Florida history occurs when 27 farm workers drown near Belle Glade after their bus plunges into a canal.

Back to State news

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

Special Links

Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk