Deadly Colonial claims 2 more lives

Two people died and five others were injured Saturday when two cars collided on Colonial Drive -- Central Florida's most dangerous road.

The driver of one vehicle has been charged with vehicular homicide in the deaths.

The crash, which shut down Colonial for several hours in far-eastern Orange County, rattled even a veteran Florida Highway Patrol trooper.

"I've been on the Highway Patrol since 1995, and this is one of the most unbelievable accidents that I've seen," FHP Sgt. Spencer Ross said. "It's not very often that you get seven people involved in a car [accident] and this many people that are hurt and this many people that are killed."

A green Camaro, driven by Patrick Griffith, 20, was traveling east well above the posted 55-mph speed limit on East Colonial, just east of Old Cheney Highway, the FHP said.

Ross said Griffith's car tried to pass a slower vehicle on the right, lost control and crossed the grassy median. The Camaro, which had a driver and three passengers in their late teens or early 20s, slammed into the side of a gold-colored Ford Taurus LX, which was traveling westbound and carrying a woman and two boys about 10 years old.

The woman in the Taurus and a passenger in the Camaro died. Two people from the Camaro were thrown from the vehicle. The survivors were taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center, some with massive head and internal injuries. The most seriously injured was a boy in the Taurus, Ross said.

The Camaro's passengers were not wearing seat belts.

About 10 p.m., Griffith, who has a Missouri drivers license but lives in the Orlando area, was arrested at ORMC. He looked away from reporters as he was taken in a wheelchair from the emergency room to a trooper's patrol car. His lower lip quivered and his eyes were clenched shut as he was handcuffed and put in the back of the car. He was taken to the Orange County Jail on a charge of vehicular homicide, Ross said.

This is the third crash in the same eastern stretch of road in recent weeks.

On Nov. 19, two people died in a collision near Tanner Road, several miles west of Saturday's crash. Also on Nov. 19, one person died in a separate crash near State Road 520, just east of Saturday's crash.

An Orlando Sentinel series outlined the dangers on Colonial Drive, revealing the road as the 12th-deadliest in any one county in the country.

Debora Spencer, 49, and her granddaughter Cheyenne Spears, 9, watched as emergency workers cleaned up Saturday's wreckage. She lives minutes from the crash site and is sickened by the carnage on Colonial. She said she hopes officials will put a stoplight in the area.

"It's getting really, really bad," she said. "It's too much. It's got to stop."

On an 11-mile stretch of East Colonial, from the eastern Orlando city limits at Humphries Avenue to Tanner Road, 48 people have been killed in traffic crashes since the start of 2001.

And the stretch between Old Cheney Highway west of Semoran Boulevard and Goldenrod Road was particularly deadly. In that 2.4-mile segment, 18 crashes killed 24 people.

The series found that in the past six years and 11 months, 144 people have died on Colonial in Orange County -- more than on Interstate 4, Florida's Turnpike and S.R. 417 in the county combined.

The roughly 3.6 miles between Semoran and the Central Florida GreeneWay is the worst stretch. Saturday's crash was east of the GreeneWay and not in this high-crash zone.

By Amy C. Rippel Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer

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