Antonio Wilcox Jr. (Broward County Jail). Background: Scene of fatal crash that left four dead in Miami Gardens, Florida (WTVJ/YouTube).
A trip to the movies to celebrate a birthday in Florida turned tragic when an alleged drunk driver traveling nearly 100 mph slammed into a family’s car, killing a woman and her three grandchildren.
Antonio Wilcox Jr., 25, stands accused of four counts of vehicular manslaughter and is expected to face additional charges. Miami Gardens police say Wilcox was driving a black Kia Sorrento down a city street at 99 mph around 6 p.m. Saturday when he slammed into the back of a white Nissan Altima, which then crashed into a Cadillac Escalade.
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Inside the Altima was 51-year-old Rosa Mae Jones and her grandchildren, Kamari Graham and Ireanna Johnson, both 10, along with 8-year-old Azariah McCall, local NBC affiliate WTVJ reports. Two other adults and two children in the Altima suffered serious injuries. The family was on their way to the movies to celebrate Kamari’s 10th birthday. At least three people in the Altima were not wearing seat belts, police said.
Local media outlets obtained security camera footage that captured the horrifying crash.
“Mr. Wilcox made a conscious decision to get into that vehicle and drive in a reckless manner with no regard to human life,” Miami Gardens Police Executive Officer Emmanuel Jeanty told reporters at a press conference. “In my law enforcement career this has been the worst accident that I have witnessed and 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.”
Destiny Rosa, the mother of one of the surviving children, told local ABC affiliate WPLG, that she was tracking her son’s phone when it stopped moving.
“As soon as he left my house I started tracking his location and he wasn’t moving and I just knew something was wrong,” she told the TV station.
Wilcox, who was treated at the hospital, is at the Broward County Jail without bond.
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