Jose Carmo, Jr., his wife, Adriana, and their oldest daughter were killed in a massivle pileup on I-75 in Alachua County.
Written by
Gannett News Service
MARIETTA, Ga. - Friends and relatives of the lone survivor of a family killed in a milelong pileup along I-75 Sunday south of Gainesville, Fla., worry that she'll be deported.
Lidiane Carmo, 14, moved to the United States from Brazil with her family 12 years ago. They were all undocumented.
Jose Carmo Jr., 43, a pastor at Igreja Internacional da Restauracao or the International Church of the Restoration here; his wife, Adriana, 39; and their oldest daughter, Leticia, 17, all of Kennesaw, Ga., died early Sunday in what became a string of collisions along Interstate 75 in a dense fog mixed with smoke from a marsh fire. Carmo's brother, Edsom, 38, and his girlfriend, Rose DeSilva, 41, also died.
Authorities discovered Wednesday that 11 people died, one more than previously believed. A truck was so badly crushed and burned that it took investigators more than two days to find a third body inside.
There are eighteen survivors of the pileup.
Lidiane remains in a Gainesville hospital with serious injuries. She was told Tuesday that her immediate family had died.
"I hope that she lives here with us," said Marcia Silvia, one of the crash survivors and a member of the church. "The church is her family now. I hope that she stays here."
They all were heading home from a conference in Orlando at about 3:45 a.m. Sunday when the mixture of fog and smoke enveloped traffic. At least a dozen cars, six tractor-trailers and a motor home collided.
"She doesn't know Brazil. She barely knows Portuguese," the church's senior pastor, Arao Amazonas, said about Lidiane to CNN on Wednesday. "She speaks English like an American." She is a freshman at Sprayberry High School here; her sister was a junior.
At a church meeting Tuesday night, Brazil's deputy consul general in Atlanta, Ana Rodrigues, offered the government's condolences but could not promise help or hope.
"Immigration issues are a matter of the American government," Rodrigues said.
And she was not able to say whether the Brazilian government would be able to consider the congregation's request for financial help to fly the bodies back here for the funerals and to Brazil for the burials.
"I would like for them to come and really feel our pain and (help us) take action," said Weberson Barbosa, who was driving a second van from the church.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the incident and Florida Gov. Rick Scott has asked the state's Department of Law Enforcement to look into allegations that the marsh fire was intentionally set.
More on the deadly I-75 pile-up:
By Jon Shirek, WXIA-TV, Atlanta