NEAR FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (WSVN) – One person was rescued, two people were pronounced dead, and a fourth is presumed dead after, officials said, the car they were in plunged into a lake near Fort Lauderdale, early Monday morning.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene, near Northwest 29th Avenue and 14th Street, at around 4 a.m., Monday. Residents in the area said a vehicle was speeding down 14th Street when it veered off the roadway, crashed through two fences and drove into the lake.
Before dive teams arrived to the lake, neighbors did their best to try to save the people trapped inside.
One neighbor said he and other people in the neighborhood heard a man’s screams coming from the water and were able to pull him out with a hose before rescue crews arrived. “We threw the hose out there, and the guy grabbed it,” said neighbor Chuck. “It took us some time to figure out where he was, ’cause there’s so much brush out there, and he grabbed a hold of it. We pulled him out, and we kept trying to ask him who else was in the car with him.”
Once rescue crews arrived, the man, identified by family members as 20-year-old Keiontae Myers, told investigators there were two women and one man trapped in the vehicle. They have since been identified as 21-year old Jarvis Mosley, 23-year-old Jasmine Davis and 26-year-old Lucienne Pierre.
Myers was driving the car. “No break light at all,” said Anquinette Gelsey, whose cousin was killed.
A woman who said she is pregnant with Myers’ baby provided 7News with a picture of him.
“Dude was like, his brother is still in there, his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s sister still in there,” said neighbor Chanicia Bucknor. “It just hurt so bad to see that we couldn’t get them.”
“He’s like, ‘My brother,’ and I’m like, ‘Where is he?'” Bucknor said. “And he’s like, ‘I had him, but I let him go. I couldn’t hold him.'”
Myers was then transported to an area hospital. He has since been released and is said to be OK.
A video posted to Facebook showed the moments before the vehicle went into the water.
“He was a beautiful child, always happy. He loved his daughter,” said Natasha Sutton, Jarvis’ aunt. “He’s funny. He always kept us laughing. I just seen him.”
By noon, the vehicle, a maroon Jaguar sedan, was removed from the water. Officials said the search for the vehicle took as long as it did because the car crashed through two fences, then plunged into water that is full of thick weeds.
In the muddy, tangled waters, it was not until a diver bumped into the submerged vehicle that rescue crews were able to recover the two bodies.
“The brush in the lake is very thick,” said BSO Officer Keyla Concepcion. “I’m told the weeds are about eight feet deep, visibility is very low. One of the divers actually located the vehicle under all those weeds by crashing into it.”
Police were able to recover Mosley and Davis’s bodies from the water. They searched for Pierre for several hours before she was presumed dead.
Family members of the victims were at the scene praying and waiting to get more information from emergency crews. “Oh God, I don’t know what to say. It’s so hard,” Buckner said.
After learning the results of the search, devastated family members are now left to pick up the pieces. “It’s hard, especially when you know, you’re not expecting it, because we’re young, so that’s it,” said Nastachia Gelsey, whose cousin was killed.
An investigation continues into what led to the accident.
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