- Font:
- +
- -
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The body of an eleventh person has been found in a pickup truck days after a deadly pileup on Interstate 75, the Florida Highway Patrol said Wednesday.
The Highway Patrol said the Alachua County Medical Examiner's Office determined Tuesday that another victim was inside a Dodge pickup truck that crashed into a tractor trailer as it traveled south early Sunday.
The driver and another passenger in that vehicle have still not been identified.
Fog and smoke reduced visibility along the stretch of highway south of Gainesville, causing authorities to close I-75 for more than three hours early Sunday.
Authorities reopened the road shortly before the pileups occurred on both the northbound and southbound lanes.
The Ledger newspaper reported Wednesday that at least 21 people went to hospitals in the area.
The paper said the cause of a brush fire that produced the smoke was still unknown.
Story: Pileup felt like 'end of the world'
Steven Camps, 23, of Gainesville, said Sunday that he and a friend had stopped due to the smoke and began talking to a man in the car stopped next to them, when another vehicle hit the man's car.
Camps said the man's vehicle was crushed under a semi-truck stopped in front of them. Camps said his car was hit twice, but he and his friend were able to jump out. They took cover in the grass on the shoulder of the road.
Video: Deadly crashes close I-75 (on this page)
"You could hear cars hitting each other. People were crying. People were screaming. It was crazy," he said. "If I could give you an idea of what it looked like, I would say it looked like the end of world."
He said cars and trucks were on fire and they could hear explosions as the vehicles burned.
"It was happening on both sides of the road, so there was nowhere to go. It blew my mind," he said. "It was like a war zone. It literally looked like someone was picking up cars and throwing them."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
“ ”