LAKE BUTLER, Fla. (AP) â€" Barbara and Terry Mann were supposed to complete their adoption of a 20-month-old boy on Thursday. Instead, they were planning funerals for him and six young relatives â€" all killed in a fiery car wreck.
The accident Wednesday cast a pall over this small town of about 2,000 people in northern Florida. After hearing of the accident, Barbara Mann's grief-stricken father suffered a heart attack and died.
"It's hard to fathom what it's like to lose five children, two nieces and a father in one shot. It seems like a burden too big to bear," said Scott Fisher, a family spokesman and pastor at the Lake Butler Church of Christ.
Friends and family came together to mourn the deaths as investigators tried to piece together how the three-vehicle accident happened on a clear day on a road free of obstructions.
A tractor-trailer rear-ended the children's car and crushed it against a school bus that had stopped to drop off students, authorities said. The car burst into flames, and everyone inside was killed, including 15-year-old Nicky Mann, who was driving illegally with just a learner's permit and was apparently taking her adopted siblings home from school.
Three children on the bus were seriously injured.
