A 24-year-old Lakeland man was killed and two other people were seriously injured in yet another wrong-way crash on a Tampa Bay area road Friday night, the Florida Highway Patrol said.
The four-vehicle crash happened around 11 p.m. on State Road 60 at at S. Bugg Road in Plant City.
According to troopers, a GMC Sierra pickup truck was traveling east in the inside westbound lane of S.R. 60 when the driver of a Mitsubishi Galant traveling the correct way in the same lane veered to the right to avoid collision.
The wrong-way truck hit the left side of the Mitsubishi and then crashed head-on into a 2004 Mazda RX8, causing the sports car to careen into the side of a tractor-trailer that was westbound in the adjacent lane.
The driver of the sports car, Jonathan Molina, was not wearing a seatbelt and was ejected. He died later at Tampa General Hospital, the FHP said.
Molina was on his way home from work, family members said.
The wrong-way driver and a passenger were taken Tampa General in serious condition.
Neither the driver of the Mitsubishi nor the driver of the tractor-trailer were injured.
Last year, wrong-way crashes claimed 16 in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties over an 11-month span.