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SCOOBA, Miss. (AP) — The Latest on a Mississippi highway crash that left eight people dead (all times local):
3:30 p.m.
A Mississippi woman says her husband, three of his brothers, and four other relatives died in a crash on a rural Mississippi highway.
Amy Lugo says her 48-year-old husband Francisco Lugo was killed. She says three of his brothers also died in Monday morning's crash along with an uncle, two cousins and a brother-in-law.
She said the lone survivor in the van, the driver, also is a cousin. She says the men worked pruning trees.
She said the victims were originally from Mexico. She described them as hard workers who loved their family.
She and her husband have a son who turns 2 in August.
In tears, she said her husband had "waited so long to be a dad and now this happens."
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2:20 p.m.
The driver of a van that collided with a truck on a Mississippi highway says he was in his lane and tried to avoid the truck but could not.
The head-on crash killed all eight passengers in the van before dawn Monday near the Mississippi-Alabama line.
In an interview on the road shoulder near the crash site, Alejandro Estrejo Resendiz said he was driving the van.
Speaking through a translator, he told The Associated Press that the crash happened on a curve near a small bridge as the group of workers drove to Monroeville, Alabama, for jobs cutting trees. He said the truck pushed the van backward into the guardrail, where it came to rest.
The driver of the truck also survived. That driver's name wasn't immediately released.
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8:50 a.m.
A Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman says a wreck on a rural highway has killed eight people.
Sgt. Andy West said the patrol received a call just before 3:30 a.m. Monday about the two-vehicle wreck on Mississippi Highway 16 east of Scooba, near the Alabama state line.
WTOK reported that Kemper County Sheriff James Moore said a box truck and a passenger van collided head-on.
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