Updated: A 23-year-old Gibsonton man was killed Thursday night on Interstate 4 in Tampa when a road sign toppled onto on the vehicle amid dangerous winds from Hurricane Helene, Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed.
“We have had a report of a fatality on the roadway. A car driving on I-4 near Ybor City in Tampa was hit when a sign fell onto the highway,” DeSantis said during a media briefing late Thursday night.
The Florida Highway Patrol later reported on Friday that the man died while riding as a passenger in a Honda Odyssey driven by a 61-year-old Gibsonton man. He was traveling westbound on Interstate 4 with the victim and two other Gibsonton residents, a 44-year-old woman and 24-year-old man. The other three people in the vehicle survived.
The death was apparently the first in Florida related to the hurricane, which at the time was more than a hundred miles away nearing the state’s Big Bend area. Tampa was experiencing tropical storm-strength winds from the hurricane.
“That just shows you that it’s very dangerous conditions out there,” DeSantis said.
An image from a Florida Department of Transportation camera showed the road sign atop the vehicle.
“We know that travel on the roads can be hazardous, and we typically, unfortunately, will have fatalities in every storm from that,” DeSantis said. “When you are out on the roads in the middle of one of these storms, that is very, very dangerous.”
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly placed the victim in the vehicle. He was a passenger.
