Eight people traveling in a church van were killed early Monday morning when the vehicle steered off a Florida highway and crashed into a canal, Fox News reported.
The van carrying 18 passengers was returning to Fort Pierce from a Fort Myers church convention at around 12:30 a.m. when the driver went through a stop sign on U.S. 27 and swerved across all lanes where it sped down an embankment and landed in a canal near Lake Okeechobee, the station reported.
The driver and seven passengers were killed, police said.
"They didn't see that stop sign. They shot right through it," Chief Deputy Duane Pottorff, of Glades County where the crash occurred, told the station. "It was a sad evening."
One of the passengers was able to crawl out of the crashed vehicle and alert authorities, family members told Fox News.
Ten other people inside the 16-passenger van were taken to local hospitals, according to WINK. Several have since been released but some remained hospitalized, including a 4-year-old who is in stable condition. None of the names of the people involved have been released.
The group, all members of the Independent Haitian Assembly of God, were reportedly traveling back from a church convention held at the Eglise De Dieu La Jerusalem Celeste church in Fort Myers.
"It's heart breaking," Dina Sarver, a member of the Fort Pierce-based Haitian church, told WINK.
"Because it is so many of us...It was supposed to be a simple go, have fun, come back.
"It just didn't turn out to be like that," Sarver said.
