A Broward County sheriff’s deputy driving fast through through an intersection caused the four-vehicle crash that sent 10 to the hospital late Saturday morning, a passenger in one of the vehicles said Sunday.
Deborah Rolle said she was sitting at a red light in the left-turn lane of 27th Avenue, preparing to turn east onto West Sunrise Boulevard, when two Broward County Sheriff’s Office vehicles showed up in the intersection “speeding toward us.”
One of the deputies, driving a Chevy Tahoe SUV, struck a black SUV that was driving through the intersection on Sunrise, then crossed the median and struck the grey Hyundai Elantra in which Rolle was a passenger, pushing it back several feet, Rolle said.
Rolle gave the South Florida Sun Sentinel a copy of an incident report that identifies the four vehicles involved in the crash and their drivers, but says nothing about the cause of the crash or how it unfolded. She said the single page was given to her husband in the hospital.
It identifies the deputy involved in the crash as Jake F. Rodriguez, age 26.
After the crash, the other deputy stopped his vehicle and got out and waited for help to arrive, Rolle said.
An initial news release by a Broward County sheriff’s spokeswoman on Saturday stated that a Broward Sheriff’s Office unit was one of four vehicles involved in a multi-vehicle crash just after 10:45 a.m. near the 2700 block of Sunrise Boulevard.
WSVN-TV’s website quoted a witness as saying she heard sirens before the wreck took place. CBS News Miami interviewed the same witness, who said a police officer “must have lost control of his car” and ran into “like, three other cars.”
A story on NBC 6’s website said that “witnesses told cameras that it seemed the deputy was on the way to a call when the crash occurred.” It added, “Further details have not been released to confirm these accounts.”
Rolle, a Clearwater resident, said she was in town visiting her husband, who lives in Miami.
She was one of four people in the gray Hyundai, and all sustained injuries, including her mom, who suffered bruises to her knee and shoulder; her daughter, whose neck was injured; and her husband, who was driving the car.
The deputy struck their car on the driver side, causing Rolle’s husband to suffer injuries to his neck, shoulders, head and chest, Rolle said.
Rolle said she didn’t know what happened to the people injured in the other vehicles.
“I didn’t realize it was 10 people involved until I was in the back of the emergency vehicle being rushed to the hospital,” she said.
Rolle, who was in the passenger seat, said she has two knots on her stomach from where the safety belt restrained her and has a big knot on her elbow.
She was rushed to the hospital by ambulance because she is seven months pregnant and emergency workers didn’t know whether the crash would cause her to deliver prematurely.
She was kept in the hospital longer than her family members so the hospital could monitor her baby’s condition, she said. The baby, tests confirmed, was unharmed, Rolle said.
Asked about statements by Rolle and witnesses that the crash was caused by a speeding deputy, sheriff’s spokeswoman Miranda Grossman said that “detectives with the Broward Sheriff’s Office TITAN (Threat Intervention Tactics Analytics Network) were responding to an incident when the crash occurred.”
She added, “The crash remains under investigation.”
After this story was initially published, the Broward Sheriff’s Office corrected the name of the team that was responding to an incident when the crash occurred.
Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com .
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