1 dead, 10 hurt after bus carrying 38 workers collides with fuel truck, Florida cops say

One person was killed when a bus carrying migrant workers crashed head-on into a tanker truck on a highway, a Florida sheriff said.

The bus, which had 38 people on board, was traveling westbound on a highway around 6 a.m. on April 3 when it crashed in Fort Meade, according to a news release from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.

For “unknown reasons,” the bus crossed into the eastbound lane and struck a tanker head-on, deputies said. The tanker was carrying 8,400 pounds of unleaded fuel, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said during a news conference.

One person on the bus died at the scene, the release says. Nine other people from the bus were taken to nearby hospitals, according to deputies. The driver of the tanker truck was also injured and taken to a hospital.

The bus was bringing workers to pick strawberries in Plant City, about 45 miles northwest of where it crashed in central Florida, the sheriff’s office said.

Authorities did not release any information about the person who died.

A photo shared by Polk County Fire Rescue showed a bus resembling a school bus turned nearly onto its side with the front heavily damaged.

Some fuel from the tanker leaked onto the highway, the release says. The remaining fuel was being transferred to another truck.

The bus is owned by Outlook Harvesting in Winter Haven, according to the sheriff’s office. A supervisor at the company did not return a message left by McClatchy News.

“All crashes are gut-wrenching,” Judd said during the news conference , “but when you see that there’s a group of folks who were on their way to do hard work that most of society won’t do so that we can have the ability to have fresh fruit, and for reasons unknown at this point in the investigation the driver careens over the center line head-on into another vehicle, it’s very sad.”

Judd said the sheriff’s office would be following up with the passengers on the bus to see if they would need services and would also notify their countries of origin, but he added those who weren’t injured can be expected to go “back to their normal routine of work and life.”

Fort Meade is about 50 miles southwest of Tampa.