MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – A 25-year-old man was driving drunk at 99 mph when he caused a chain-reaction crash that left a woman and three children dead in Miami Gardens over the weekend, police said during a Tuesday morning news conference.
The deadly wreck happened just before 6 p.m. Saturday at Northwest 170th Street and 37th Avenue.
Police said Antonio Wilcox Jr. was speeding in a Kia Sorento and accelerating when he plowed into a white Nissan Altima with eight people inside. The sedan then crashed into a gray Cadillac Escalade.
Rosa Jones, 51, and three of her grandchildren, 8-year-old Azaria McCall and 10-year-olds Kamari Graham and Ireanna Johnson, were killed in the Altima.
Police said the children’s mother, another woman, a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, a friend of the family, remained hospitalized in critical condition Tuesday.
“In my law enforcement career, this has been the worst accident that I have witnessed,” Miami Gardens Police Department Executive Officer Emmanuel Jeanty said. “As a matter of fact, our traffic homicide detective had even stated the same. In their many years of investigating these types of crashes, the detective even stated this was the worst accident that he had to investigate.”
Wilcox, of Naples, was taken to a hospital in Broward County and he remained there as of Tuesday.
Once released, he’ll be taken to Miami-Dade County, where he’ll face several charges, including at least four counts of vehicular homicide.