ST. LUCIE COUNTY, Fla. — St. Lucie County commissioners held a ribbon cutting Wednesday after the completion of safety improvements following a series of deadly crashes at a dangerous intersection.
Families and county leaders had been urging the state for years to improve the intersection of Okeechobee and Midway roads.
The intersection has been the site of multiple wrecks including a deadly school bus crash in 2012 and a head-on collision that killed two teens in 2018.
The fatal bus crash involved 30 students from FK Sweet Elementary where 9-year-old Aaron Beauchamp was killed.
The 2018 wreck resulted in the deaths of Santia Feketa,18, and her best friend, 17-year-old Britney Poindexter. An elderly wrong-way driver without his lights on hit the girls head-on.
A couple from Okeechobee was also killed at the intersection in 2019.
A video went viral last year of a wrong-way driver, heading west in the eastbound lanes along the divided highway near the intersection.
The Florida Department of Transportation began improvements on the intersection in October 2020.
St. Lucie County Commissioner Frannie Hutchinson previously said that the state expedited safety improvements that would have taken seven to eight years.
Santia's father, Stewart Feketa, was given the honor of cutting the ribbon at Wednesday's ceremony.
"Would I have preferred to see a stop sign here a long time ago? Yes," Feketa said while at the roadside memorial for his daughter and her friend.
FDOT is wrapping up a $300,000 state-funded project with the final addition of adding three-way stop lights at the intersection.
At the time of the teenagers' crash in 2018, there was only a stop sign for one direction.
Now, 15 street lights have been installed in the area.
A turning lane has also been widened to improve visibility before turning. Illuminated pavers were also added to the road.
"Now it's up to the public to follow the laws," Feketa said.