Havana Woman, 25, Killed in Wrong Way Crash on US 27 in Gadsden County

A 25-year-old woman from Havana, Florida, was killed and her passenger was seriously injured early on Sunday, November 1, in a head-on crash on US 27 in Gadsden County. The Florida Highway Patrol gave the account in a preliminary report. The Tallahassee Democrat reported the details from that report. This article rests on that single official source, and the patrol says the crash is still under investigation, so some facts may change as troopers finish their work.

The crash happened at about 2:54 a.m. at US 27, also called the Florida-Georgia Highway, and River Bluff Drive. The patrol says an SUV driven by a 37-year-old Tallahassee man was travelling south in the inside northbound lane, the wrong way. It hit the SUV driven by the Havana woman, who was travelling north in the inside lane. The two vehicles met head-on in the lane where the Havana woman had the right of way.

The Havana woman was pronounced dead at the scene. Her passenger, also a 25-year-old woman from Havana, suffered serious injuries. The Tallahassee driver suffered minor injuries. All three people were wearing seat belts, the patrol said. No names were released in the report.

Help at the scene

The Florida Highway Patrol was assisted by Gadsden County EMS, the Gadsden County Sheriff's Office and Gadsden County Fire Rescue. The report does not say where the injured passenger was taken for treatment, and it does not give the Tallahassee driver's account of how his vehicle came to be in the northbound lane. Those points are part of the work investigators still have to do.

Why wrong way crashes are so deadly

Wrong way crashes often happen at night, when fewer drivers are on the road and a driver who enters a highway in the wrong direction may travel a long way before meeting another vehicle. Because both vehicles are moving toward each other, the closing speed is high and the force of impact is severe, even when seat belts are worn, as they were here. Investigators in cases like this one usually work to establish where the wrong way vehicle entered the road, how long it travelled against traffic, and whether speed, fatigue, impairment or confusion played a part. The preliminary report in this case answers none of those questions, and this article does not guess at them.

What happens next

Troopers will complete the investigation and a fuller report should follow. Until then, the confirmed facts are narrow: the time, the place, the direction of travel of both vehicles, the injuries, and the death of a 25-year-old driver on a road she knew, close to home. Gadsden County is a rural county west of Tallahassee, and US 27 is one of its main north and south roads, used by local drivers and by traffic moving between Florida and Georgia. For the families of the two Havana women, Sunday began with the worst kind of news, delivered before dawn.