Jacob Carpenter, Naples Daily News (Florida)

Dispatchers were having trouble locating an overturned truck on a dark stretch of U.S. 41 East when a Collier County sheriff’s deputy crashed into the vehicle Monday morning, a 911 recording shows.

Sheriff’s Office officials said Cpl. Michael Skala was responding to two related crashes on U.S. 41 near State Road 29 at about 1:45 a.m. when he hit an overturned Ford F-150 in the road. A crash report says Skala swerved to avoid the crash and he was neither careless nor negligent.

On the 911 call, the dispatcher struggles to obtain a location of the crashes from three people involved on the scene. Nobody was seriously injured.

Florida Highway Patrol troopers said Daniel R. Calderon Licea, 40, of Miami, was driving on U.S. 41 when he left the road, overcorrected and hit a guardrail at about 1:30 a.m. His truck came to rest on its roof in the middle of the road. Alcohol is believed to be a factor in the crash, troopers said.

Five minutes later, a taxi driven by Sandor Daranyi, 54, of Fort Lauderdale, sideswiped Calderon Licea’s truck. Daranyi was unable to see Calderon Licea’s truck because of headlights from oncoming traffic, troopers said.

At 1:45 a.m., Skala was responding to the crash when he hit the truck, sheriff’s officials said. He was treated for minor cuts.

“I smashed the truck in the middle of the road,” Skala told a dispatcher. “He was already wrecked.”

For 13 minutes before Skala collided with the truck, Calderon Licea, Daranyi and a passenger in his taxi, Manish Sharma, 23, of India, all spoke with a dispatcher. None, however, were able to communicate their location.

While speaking with Skala, the dispatcher said to “light (the area) up as much as you can because another car went by before and barely missed them.”

The Sheriff’s Office will conduct an internal investigation, officials said. Only Calderon Licea was believed to be driving under the influence, officials said.

The Florida Highway Patrol is investigating the first two crashes, while Collier deputies are handling the crash involving Skala.

Copyright © 2011 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.