SARANAC LAKE - A Saranac Lake native and his two friends were killed Tuesday night in a car crash in northern Florida.
Eli Drury, who attended Saranac Lake High School in the late 1990s, was behind the wheel of a Toyota Corolla that pulled in front of a moving tractor-trailer on U.S. 301 southeast of Jacksonville around 10 p.m. The semi hit the driver's side of the car and dragged it about 75 yards before it came to rest with the Corolla nearly completely underneath it, according to a report posted on the website of the Florida Times-Union.
Drury, 31, of Moundsville, W. Va., and the two passengers in the car were all pronounced dead at the scene. The passengers were identified by police as Timothy F. Carter, 30, of Gainesville, Fla., and Jose L. Caicedo, 47, of Alachua, Fla.
Police told the Times-Union that the three were returning from a Jimmy Buffett concert in Jacksonville at the time of the crash. The driver, Drury, and the front-seat passenger were wearing seat belts; the back-seat passenger was not.
The driver of the truck was taken to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Drury was the son of Carmen Ordonez, a teacher at Saranac Lake Middle School, and Jack Drury, the CEO of Leading E.D.G.E., a Saranac Lake-based education consulting, meeting facilitation, team building and wilderness education business. Jack Drury is also chairman of the Harrietstown Planning Board, has been involved in a number of community planning efforts in Harrietstown and Saranac Lake and started North Country Community College's wilderness recreation program.
