Florida officials investigating fiery crash that left 5 dead

Five people have died, including a small child, after the driver of an old Florida school bus carrying farmworkers ran a red light and hit a lorry, police say.

Both vehicles burst into flames and deputies jumped onto the bus to rescue victims, many who were unable to move. Wakulla County Sheriff Charlie Creel said that some of the officials entered the bus and pulled victims to safety before the vehicle was on fire completely.

Bus driver Elie Dupiche, 56, has been upgraded from critical condition to serious, according to an updated FHP report Sunday morning.

It is not clear how the death toll was first counted in the fiery crash between a bus and tractor-trailer along Coastal Highway, or US 98, on Saturday.

Wakulla County first responders work on the scene of an accident on Saturday, July 2, 2016 in Wakulla, Fla. Florida Highway Patrol investigators claim that the bus did not stop for the red light and that skid marks found at intersection reveal that the tractor-trailer braked moments before the collision. The bus apparently caught fire.

A 21-year-old passenger in the lorry, Rafael Nieves, was not injured. The accident happened on US-98, a highway that follows the Florida coast around the Gulf of Mexico.

The manager of an Exxon gas station at the intersection said she has seen several vehicle wrecks and just as many people run the red light in her 10 years there.

The driver at the truck, 55-year-old Gordon Sheets, died of his injuries.

Authorities called interpreters as no one on the Florida-bound bus spoke English. The bus carried about 35 Haitian migrant workers on their way home to Belle Glade after working in the cornfields of south Georgia for nearly two months.

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