A Haitian driver made an illegal turn and smashed into a mother’s pickup truck in Springfield, Ohio, a Post reporter witnessed Friday — as the small city grapples with a surge of immigrants from the Caribbean country who are unfamiliar with the rules of the road.
Robyn Stultz, a 32-year-old mother of three, was approaching the intersection at West First Street and St Paris Road with her 7-year-old autistic daughter in the backseat when a black Hyundai sedan collided with her truck around 2:30 p.m.
The Haitian driver made a right turn from the left lane — marked for continuing straight or turning left — and crashed into Stultz’s Ford F-350, which was making a right turn from the right lane, when he tried to overtake her, a Post reporter observed.
The Haitian driver, who remained at the scene, told The Post he was licensed and was driving to his job at Amazon. He said he had lived in the US for three years.
“I went to turn, there was an accident and that’s it. Why are you asking me questions?” he said.
Fortunately, Stultz and her young daughter were unhurt.
“He tried to cut off the truck behind me and get over, so they honked their horn at him, and he tried to overtake me on the corner,” she said.
“I seen him at the last minute but you try and stop a big truck like this — there’s no way,” she added.
The Post has reached out to the Springfield Police Department for more information.
Residents of Springfield, which has attracted national attention over false claims about its Haitian population, said that the main issue with the tens of thousands of new Haitian immigrants is not unfounded rumors of people snatching and eating pets, but from the reckless drivers.
Tensions have been rising between the Haitian population and native Springfield residents since 2023, after 11-year-old Aiden Clark was killed when a 36-year-old Haitian driving without a US license caused a school bus to roll over. Twenty others were hospitalized.
In December, Springfield grandmother Kathy Heaton was struck and killed by a Haitian immigrant driving with an expired license in December while she was collecting her garbage cans. But prosecutors declined to charge the driver, 38-year-old Robenson Louis.
Stultz said the Haitian drivers need some drivers ed courses.
“The Haitians just don’t know our laws. They are causing accidents all the time. They just need to learn the laws of the road, they need schooling,” she told The Post.
“My kids stay at home 95% of the time because the roads aren’t safe with these Haitian drivers,” the mother added.
Bryce Hatzer, 22, who witnessed Stultz’s crash, agreed that the Haitian drivers are a hazard in Springfield.
“Every day I almost get hit by Haitians at this same intersection,” he said.
“The Haitians don’t know how to drive. That guy was in the wrong lane to turn right, that’s why they collided,” he said of Stultz’s crash.
The driving problem has attracted such attention that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced this week that in addition to $2.5 million in aid, he would be sending additional State Highway Patrol troopers to Springfield to help maintain order on the roads.
Mandy Heaton, Kathy Heaton’s daughter-in-law, asked the Springfield City commission in an emotional testimony to support “Kathy’s Law,” which would require all immigrants seeking an Ohio driver’s license to go through the same tests and regulations required of first-time American drivers.
Some 20,000 Haitian migrants flocked to the city of just 60,000 people in just a few years.
The city came under the national spotlight after claims that the Haitian immigrants were killing local dogs, cats and fowl for food. The claims made headlines after they were repeated by former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.
Local officials denied that anything like that had happened.
Vance has also alleged Springfield is experiencing a “massive rise in communicable diseases,” however Clark County Combined Health District Commissioner Chris Cook told NBC News Friday that’s not accurate.
Several schools in Springfield were closed for the second day in a row on Friday due to bomb threats as a result of the national media attention.
Several city commissioners and a municipal employee were the target of an emailed bomb threat, a city spokesperson told NBC.
Local police and FBI agents are working “to determine the origin of these email threats,” the city official said.
