BY DAN HILDEBRAN
General manager
STARKE—The Florida Highway Patrol said two men died after their pickup ran under a log truck early Thursday morning.
FHP reported that the log truck was entering U.S. 301 from a private drive, attempting to make a northbound left turn onto the four-lane when the southbound pickup collided with the trailer and became lodged underneath.
The collision caused a secondary crash when the drivers of a dump truck and a sedan tried to avoid the first collision. The two vehicles struck one another and came to rest on the highway’s southbound shoulder.
Both vehicles in the secondary collision had minor damage, and one person was transported to a hospital with minor injuries.
Bradford County Fire Rescue, Clay County Fire Rescue, the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office, and FHP responded to U.S. 301 and Northwest 265th Street, north of Lawtey.
FHP said the 23-year-old driver of the pickup and his 18-year-old passenger died at the scene.
The driver of the log truck was not injured.
WJXT in Jacksonville reported that the 18-year-old in the pickup was Carlos Henriquez Contreras, who left behind a 2-month-old daughter and an 18-year-old girlfriend.
“He was like my son,” Reina Garcia, his girlfriend’s mother, told News4JAX the day following the crash. “He was a kid that, when he was 15, came to this country by himself.”
Garcia added that Contreras, an immigrant from Honduras, was working on building a home for his young family.
