Colleagues and patients are mourning the loss of a Moffitt lung cancer specialist killed Wednesday in a car wreck.

Just before 7:30 a.m. on March 28, Dr. Charles Williams Jr.'s car collided with two other vehicles on Fowler Avenue in Temple Terrace and caught fire.

"As sudden as it was as tragic as it was, it's still hard to process," Moffitt Chief Medical Officer Dr. Robert Keenan said.  

"When you are in that work room and you see the raw emotions and the boxes of tissue paper that people are going through because of the emotions that they're feeling ... you'd expect that in almost any circumstance, but I think it's magnified because of the person that Dr. Williams was," he added.

Williams had been at Moffitt since doors first opened in 1986. He was the President of the medical staff there and was awarded Physician of the Year in 2010.

Williams specialized in lung cancer treatment and was known as a family man as well as a successful physician. His colleagues said he was known for putting the patients first.

"Even if it meant spending extra time in the clinic, even if it meant adding a patient on to an already busy schedule, he would do it because he knew the importance of making certain that the patient's needs were taken care of," Keenan said.

Even when patients were close to losing their battle with cancer, Keenan said Williams was there.

"The way that he was able to bring them through that process to as peaceful an end as you can imagine," Keenan explained. "I think is something that really stands out as a testament to the kind of physician that he was."

Now, Kennan said his team members are doing their best to keep moving forward.

"They're soldiering on," he said. "They need to, because there are patients there for a number of physicians, including patients that were scheduled to see Dr. Williams, and we need to deal with those patents."

Williams was 70 years old. The cause of the crash is still under investigation.