Florida mom tried to kill her four children by telling them to remove their seatbelts before crashing into a palm tree
OCALA, FLORIDA: A Florida mother is facing multiple charges of attempted murder after authorities said she told her four children to take off their seatbelts and purposely drove into a palm tree intending to kill them. Calicia Williams, 36, and her four children were rescued from the wreckage of her Pontiac minivan after the Ocala Fire Rescue responded to a crash on Southeast 31st Street at around 2 pm on Thursday, October 3, according to Click Orlando.
Pictures of the accident uploaded by the Ocala Fire Rescue show the severity of the accident. The entire windshield was shattered, and the right side of the minivan's front end was completely shattered. All four children, three girls and one boy between the ages of 7 and 13, survived the crash with non-life threatening injuries and were transported to UF Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville for treatment.
"These kids are very, very lucky to be alive," said Corie Byrd, with the Ocala Police Department.
It soon emerged that the crash was not accidental. While on the way to the hospital, one of the daughters told first responders that her mother had told all of them to take off their seatbelts and stretch their hands out forward, and shouted "Lord Jesus save me" as the crash was happening.
She said all of them had yelled for her to slow down, but she refused. After the crash, she reportedly told them, "The devil can't hurt you, he only hurts bad people. You have the light of Jesus in you and only Jesus can cure us."
An initial investigation revealed that Williams neither tried to brake nor slow down before flying over the median and crashing into the palm tree. "Based on (an investigator's) findings, he was able to determine there were no brake marks, and based on some of the scuff marks and tire tracks in the median, you can tell she was steering directly toward the palm tree," Byrd said.
They also found that while Williams had asked her children to take off their seatbelts, marks on her neck seemed to indicate that she had been wearing one herself.
Authorities said that Williams seemed "agitated" at the scene and claimed that the vehicle crashed because her husband put a hex on her and because she was being "followed by a lot of people in cars and she was trying to read all their tag numbers."
Williams was taken to Ocala Regional Medical Center and will be booked into the Marion County Jail on four counts of attempted murder when she is released. Authorities announced that she would be held without bail. "It makes you want to hold your kids tight, and it's unfathomable why a mother would want to do this," Byrd said. "Hopefully this mother gets the help that she needs and the kids get the help that they need."