‘I couldn’t be there to protect them.’ 3 kids and their moms killed in Florida tragedy

A Florida pastor is grieving the loss of his two daughters and three grandchildren who were among the five people killed in a car crash in Orlando Thursday night.

To add to the man’s heartache, his wife, who was driving one of the cars, is battling Stage 4 cancer and is hospitalized with serious injuries and so he hasn’t been able to tell her of their unimaginable loss.

“Just imagining that final impact and what my kids were going through and what my grandchildren were saying and I couldn’t be there to protect them,” Pastor Anthony Oliver told a Fox 35 News reporter in Orlando. “Because anytime anything happens they’re always calling for me, ‘Papa, Papa.’ And I could imagine them calling my name. That’s what hurts. That I wasn’t there.”

Anthony shared photos with Fox 35 morning reporter Sydney Cameron after he placed flowers and stuffed animals at the crash site on Clarcona Ocoee Road at Gaymar Drive in Orange County.

At a news conference near the accident site Thursday night, the Florida Highway Patrol gave some details about the crash, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

FHP spokeswoman Lt. Kim Montes said Shawn Jones Oliver, 51, the driver of a Hyundai, was carrying six people that included Oliver’s five family members. She was heading west and turned left into the path of an SUV, according to the FHP.

The Hyundai had five seats, and several passengers were ejected from the car. Montes said some had not been wearing seatbelts.

The driver of the SUV, a 28-year-old man from Apopka, was not as seriously injured as Oliver and was in stable condition, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

The five who died: Antoinette Oliver, 30, the driver’s daughter and her children Chloe Oliver, 5; and King Oliver, 5 months old. Also killed in the crash was Oliver’s sister Liza Jackson, 25, and her daughter, Olivia Jackson, 4, WKMG News 6 reported.