Story highlights A woman in an SUV hits a 300-pound black bear 
 
 Three people in one car pull over to help 
 
 Another car plows into the three good Samaritans, killing them 
 
 A rare car crash involving a black bear and a chain reaction left three people dead and eight injured in Florida, authorities said. 
 
 A woman in an SUV hit the 300-pound black bear in a dark, remote road Sunday night, leaving her stranded at Big Cypress Seminole Reservation in the Everglades. 
 
 A group of three people in a separate car pulled over to help, said Gary Bitner, a spokesman for the Seminole Police Department. 
 
 Once they got out of their vehicle, a third car plowed into the disabled SUV then hit the three good Samaritans, authorities said. 
 
 All three died, Bitner said. 
 
 The three cars had a total of 13 passengers; eight were injured and an additional two were not hurt, including the woman in the SUV. 
 
 "I have never heard of a case of a bear being in a traffic accident," Bitner said. "We have had cases of Florida panthers being involved in car accident, but not a Florida black bear." 
 
 The identities of the victims were not immediately released. 
 
 The bear died when it was struck by the SUV. ||||| Follow CBSMIAMI.COM: Facebook | Twitter 
 
 MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Three people were killed and eight others were hospitalized after a SUV hit and killed a black bear, resulting in a chain reaction crash with two other cars in Florida’s Everglades Sunday evening. 
 
 The first crash happened along Snake Road in Alligator Alley on the Big Cypress Seminole reservation, said Seminole Tribe Spokesman Gary Bitner. Snake Road is near mile marker 49 on Alligator Alley. 
 
 Broward Sheriff’s spokesman Mike Jachles described the first vehicle as a Cadillac SUV, possibly an Escalade. Jachles said there were at least three people in the SUV with injures. 
 
 WATCH MaryAnn Martinez’ report, click here. 
 
 According to Seminole police, a second car stopped to help the passengers inside the SUV. That’s when a third car, a Mercedes, crashed into the second car. The three people from car number two were killed. 
 
 The passengers from the Mercedes have various degrees of injures. 
 
 “There was an 45-year-old man, a 14-year-old son, a daughter, and a grandchild in that third vehicle.” said Jachles. 
 
 Six patients were transported to Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale. Two others were taken to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood. 
 
 Of the 13 passengers in all three cars, two walked away uninjured including the driver of the SUV that hit the bear. Jachles said the driver walked away without a scratch, even though the SUV was practically totaled after hitting and killing the black bear. 
 
 The Florida Fish and Wild-life Commission said the Everglades is the natural habitat of black bears. 
 
 RELATED CONTENT: ||||| After crashing her BMW into several cars at high speed, college student Cariann Hithon sat behind the wheel as a noisy crowd gathered around her. Onlookers filming on their smartphones yelled for her to get out of the damaged car. Somebody hollered: “She drunk as sh*t.” 
 
 Uniformed Miami Beach police officers walked up. For a brief few seconds, it appeared nothing more than a routine, if harrowing, car accident on South Beach. 
 
 Then the car screeched forward. 
 
 As onlookers screamed in terror, the black BMW sedan plowed into a Miami Beach cop standing in the middle of the street, tossing him to the pavement, video footage from the scene showed. Another officer instantly let loose three quick shots. The BMW swerved and crashed on 12th Street just yards away. 
 
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 “I was literally shocked she would drive into four or five officers,” said Miami Beach lawyer Sean Ellsworth, a passenger in one of the cars that was hit. “She just floored it.” 
 
 Witness accounts and video footage posted Monday appear to jibe with the Miami Beach Police Department claim that Hithon drove at officers Sunday evening, forcing one to fire, killing the 22-year-old Temple University student who was in town to celebrate her birthday. 
 
 “It played out like a movie set with people running, screaming, car crashes, gunshots, an injured officer lying on his back on the road — all within a minute,” said John Butchko, a retired Miami-Dade homicide detective whose car was hit by Hithon moments before the shooting. 
 
 Exactly why Hithon panicked and tried to flee may never be known, but investigators believe she and a male friend — who is seen casually getting out of the car well before she accelerates — had been drinking heavily that day. 
 
 Now, against a backdrop of scrutiny of police tactics across the country, prosecutors have opened an inquiry into whether police acted lawfully in killing Hithon as her family and friends grapple with the violent ending to a promising life. “She was going to be the attorney to save the world,” said her father, Cary Hithon, a retired U.S. Navy captain. “Everybody that knew her knew she had a great future.” 
 
 Hithon’s father said she’d recently transferred from Hampton University in Virginia to Temple University in Philadelphia and expected to graduate with a degree in political science this spring. After that, Hithon, who is from Bowie, MD., planned to follow her longstanding dream of attending law school. 
 
 Miami Beach police investigate an incident in which a woman was shot dead after she slammed her car into an officer and then crashing into a white SUV on Washington Avenue at South Beach on Sunday, October 8, 2017. Sebastián Ballestas For the Miami Herald 
 
 Hithon was a talented baker and makeup artist, her father said, the one all her friends and sisters tapped to help on special occasions. 
 
 Hithon had a few brushes with the law over the past year in Hampton, according to court records, including arrests for marijuana possession, giving a fake ID to an officer and assault and battery. She was not convicted of any of the charges, although she was convicted on a citation of improper driving. 
 
 Shooting at a moving vehicle was once completely prohibited by Miami Beach Police Department policy, an approach adopted by Miami Beach Police Chief Daniel Oates when he arrived in 2014. Oates’ 2014 directive followed a wild melee on Memorial Day weekend that bears only passing similarity with Sunday’s incident. Raymond Herisse, a tourist in town for the 2014 weekend’s parties, was killed in a hail of bullets from multiple police officers. 
 
 Cops unleashed 116 rounds at Herisse’s car after police say he sideswiped a number of cars and hit a patrol officer on a bicycle. But one exception was added to the policy five months ago — when a vehicle threatens to ram into a crowd. The policy was updated after terrorist vehicle attacks in Europe. 
 
 SHARE COPY LINK A video provided to the Miami Herald that purports to show the police shooting that killed Temple University student Cariann Hithon. 
 
 Counterparts at Miami-Dade police are investigating the officer-involved shooting. Prosecutors will ultimately decide if the firing officer broke any laws in using deadly force. Under Florida’s “fleeing felon” law, police can open fire on someone suspected of committing a felony and who could pose a threat to the public. 
 
 In a statement, Miami Beach’s police union lamented the woman’s death but said “we cannot dismiss the fact that an officer was hit with deadly force by a vehicle that was driving recklessly and fleeing from the scene of an accident.” 
 
 Oates said there were more officers than usual patrolling the Miami Beach’s entertainment district, which was busier with tourists because of the Columbus Day holiday. 
 
 Just past 6 p.m. Sunday, police said, Hithon and her companion got into the black BMW sedan and sped into oncoming traffic on Ocean Drive, smashing into two cars in full view of horrified sidewalk diners. 
 
 Moments later, the BMW blew through a red light on 12th Street at Collins Avenue, plowing into a Mercedes-Benz driven by Butchko, the retired county homicide detective — missing a direct hit on his passenger, Ellsworth, the lawyer, by just a few feet. 
 
 Butchko said the woman was going at least 60 miles at full speed before hitting the front passenger side of his Mercedes. “We clearly had a green light. Two cars had already gone through the intersection,” Butchko said. 
 
 Butchko and Ellsworth suffered minor injuries. The two had just left the hospital after visiting George Cholakis, a former prosecutor who died earlier Sunday of an apparent heart attack. 
 
 Ellsworth called 911 and hopped out to check on the damaged BMW. “She was looking straight ahead. She didn’t acknowledge anything in her peripheral vision,” he said. 
 
 SHARE COPY LINK Police Chief Daniel Oates holds a press conference after a police officer shot and killed a woman who officers say caused at least one crash and knocked a cop to the ground in Miami Beach on Sunday, Oct. 8, 2017. 
 
 “I think she was on drugs or something,” said Miguel Garcia, a tourist from Chile who ran to the car after the crash. “She looked like she was messed up.” 
 
 Video footage, shared on Instagram by a witness with the screen name “MrWeLive,” showed observers reveling in the spectacle. “They getting that story together,” one man said of the couple in the BMW. 
 
 “Ya’ll get out the way in case she drive on,” one woman told the crowd. 
 
 As a Beach cop walked up, somebody yelled, “She was trying to run away.” Then, the BMW accelerated. After the police officer shot and the car crashed, the crowd began running to the scene. “She’s going to jail!” somebody yelled. 
 
 The footage showed police officers frantically performing CPR on the woman as paramedics arrived. 
 
 The injured Miami Beach officer is David Cajuso, who joined the force in September 2015. He was released from the hospital early Monday and is recovering at home, a department spokesman said. 
 
 Miami Beach police have not identified the officer who opened fire on Hithon. 
 
 Cariann Hithon Contributed to the Miami Herald 
 
 Her dad said he had “a lot of questions” about what exactly happened Sunday night, but he wouldn’t speculate without more information. 
 
 “She liked to drive fast, but what young person doesn’t drive fast?” he said. 
 
 His daughter was a champion for the undeserved, Hithon said. His last conversation with her was about the controversy over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem and police brutality in the United States. 
 
 “It’s kind of ironic she was killed by a police officer,” he said. “To end her life this way is obviously very devastating.”
– It's not uncommon to spot a black bear roaming the Florida Everglades, but it is uncommon to actually hit one on the road. Three people died last night and eight were injured in a three-car wreck in the Big Cypress Seminole Reservation that began when the first car hit a bear, the Sun-Sentinel reports. The SUV driver's collision with the 300-pound bear set off a chaotic chain reaction. A second car with three people pulled over to help out the SUV passengers—the bear was dead, the SUV was totaled, and passengers were hurt, though the driver herself wasn't injured. That's when a Mercedes smashed into the second car, killing the three good Samaritans who had stopped to help, CBS Miami reports. The Mercedes passengers and at least three of the SUV's passengers suffered various injuries ranging from serious to critical and were brought to two local hospitals by airlift and ambulance. "I have never heard of a case of a bear being in a traffic accident," a Seminole Police Department spokesman tells CNN. "We have had cases of Florida panthers being involved in car accident[s], but not a Florida black bear." One other person wasn't injured in the accident, which involved a total of 13 people and took place close to 7pm on desolate Snake Road. (Another recent tragic crash involved a 16-year-old driving his family to Disney World.)