A 34-year-old woman from LaBelle has died after her pickup truck crossed the center line on a curve on County Road 78 in Hendry County, sideswiped a dump truck and entered a canal, the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) said. The crash happened at about 5 p.m. on Wednesday, November 11, and troopers reported it publicly on Thursday, November 12.
Source: Florida Traffic — Florida Highway Patrol release
The crash occurred near 6978 County Road 78, just east of Hidden Hammock Drive, outside LaBelle in rural Hendry County in southwest Florida. The woman was driving a 2023 Chevrolet Colorado eastbound around the curve, while a 2022 Kenworth dump truck, driven by a 48-year-old man also from LaBelle, was traveling westbound around the same curve and approaching Hidden Hammock Drive, according to the FHP.
According to the troopers' account, the Chevrolet crossed the double yellow centerline and entered the westbound lane, directly into the dump truck's path. The pickup sideswiped the Kenworth rather than striking it head-on, then continued east and left the roadway, entering a canal along the westbound shoulder. The FHP account was also carried by NBC2 News in southwest Florida.
Source: NBC2 News via Spot On Florida
The woman sustained critical injuries in the crash. She was transported to an area hospital, where she was later pronounced dead, the FHP said. The 48-year-old dump-truck driver was not injured. Troopers did not identify either driver in their release, and they did not explain what caused the pickup to cross the centerline.
A rural two-lane road, a curve and a canal
County Road 78 is one of the main east-west routes serving LaBelle, the Hendry County seat, and the farm and ranch country around it. Like many rural highways in southwest Florida, it is a two-lane road where local drivers share the pavement with heavy commercial traffic — dump trucks, farm vehicles and tractor-trailers moving between fields, worksites and the coast — and where drainage canals run alongside long stretches of roadway. On a road of that kind, a vehicle that drifts across the center line on a curve has almost no margin: oncoming traffic is a lane away, and the shoulder can give way to water.
That mix is part of daily life for the truck drivers who work these corridors, including many Punjabi drivers who haul in Florida and across the southeastern United States. In this crash, the FHP says the contact between the two vehicles was a sideswipe, not a head-on collision, and the driver of the much heavier Kenworth was able to walk away uninjured — while the pickup left the road and entered the canal, with fatal consequences for its driver.
The FHP has released the sequence of the crash, the two vehicles, the drivers' ages and home city, and the nearest address. It has NOT released either driver's name, and it has NOT said why the Colorado crossed the center line. No official account has attributed the crash to speed, impairment, distraction or a medical episode, and none of those should be assumed until troopers publish their findings.
The crash happened at the start of the evening on a weekday, on a road that carries LaBelle's local traffic as well as through traffic crossing Hendry County. For residents, County Road 78 is not a distant interstate — it is the road used for work, school and farm runs — which is why a fatal crash on a familiar curve, a short distance east of Hidden Hammock Drive, has drawn attention across the small community. Neither driver's name had been released as of Thursday's reports, pending the FHP's process for notifying family.
What happens next
The Florida Highway Patrol says the crash remains under investigation. The findings troopers have not yet published — why the pickup crossed the double yellow line on the curve, and the formal identification of the driver who died, which is normally released after next of kin are notified — will come from the FHP's completed traffic-homicide reporting. Awaaz Punjab will update this story if the patrol releases the driver's name or its findings on the cause.