A woman and two girls died Sunday afternoon when the vehicle that carried them and two other passengers veered off a wooded, dirt road into a canal in the J.W. Corbett Wildlife Management Area.
The accident occurred around 12:55 p.m. on Youth Camp Road, about one mile from the park's north entrance near Indiantown Road and the Beeline Highway just south of the Martin-Palm Beach county line.
Tracy Butler, 32, of Loxahatchee, Alyssa Mechetti, 12, and Courtney Quick, 16, died in the accident, sheriff's spokesman Paul Miller said. Mechetti and Quick were thought to be Butler's stepdaughter and niece, according to Miller, though the exact relationships were still being confirmed.
Macie Butler, 15, and family friend Sandra Hofstrand, 16, of Royal Palm Beach, both were able to escape the sunken 1992 Dodge Ram and were unharmed.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
The vehicle apparently careened out of control and rolled several times into the canal. It lay upside down in the water, its tires rising from a bed of floating-leaved plants as friends stood watching on the edge of the desolate road.
The father and stepmother of Sandra Hofstrand kneeled down and looked at the murky water where their daughter pulled herself free from the wreck that still held her friends' bodies.
"She said she got out herself," Beverly Hofstrand, 40, said as her stepdaughter, Sandra, spoke to a counselor inside the Hofstrand's car. "It's tough. I'm trembling. We just lost her grandfather a month ago."
The relatives of Macie Butler, who stood in the embrace of a man identified as her father by a counselor on the scene, would not speak to reporters.
Joe Hofstrand, 42, said he did not know his daughter had planned to go to the wildlife park Sunday.
"She said she was going out with friends," Hofstrand, visibly shaken, said softly. He said his daughter, a student at Royal Palm Beach High School, was in shock but physically unscathed. "She's just crying. She doesn't know her own name right now," he said.
In a brief phone interview hours after the accident, Hofstrand said his daughter and Quick were best friends. They met in Royal Palm Beach High School two-and-a-half years ago and were members of the school band.
"Emotionally she's a wreck but physically she's ok," Hofstrand said. "She's adamant about going back to school."
Sheriff's deputies think Tracy Butler was driving the white, four-door car, Miller said. He said divers found Butler's body in the back seat, but she may have been trying to get out.
Miller said two friends of the group drove ahead in a separate vehicle. When they noticed the Dodge Ram no longer trailed them, they drove back to find the wreck. Miller said Leslie Ockunzzi, 31, went into the water and pulled out the two girls' bodies.
One victim's remains lay wrapped on the bank of the marshy canal as others were recovered. Rescue workers from the Sheriff's Office, Palm Beach County Fire Rescue, and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission explored the thick brush looking for clues. The Medical Examiner's Office was also on hand.
Sgt. John Churchill of the sheriff's vehicle homicide unit said an investigation into the cause of the accident would not be complete before autopsy reports as well as a mechanical inspection of the car were conducted. Little information had yet been gleaned from the two distraught survivors.
Investigators marked the tire tracks the vehicle's swerve left on the road.
"It looks like the roll began when they started to go into the water," Churchill said.
Deputies said the group appeared to be on a recreational ride through the wildlife park, a 60,000-acre tract of pine flatwoods and cypress swamps known for its bobcats, water fauna and Indian mounds.
