Kevin Morris, a homicide investigator with the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office, was killed in a head-on collision while responding to an officer-involved shooting in Mims, Florida, authorities said. The 26-year-old driver of the other vehicle also died in the crash.

The collision occurred around 11 p.m. Saturday in the northbound lanes of Interstate 95, south of State Road 46 near Mims. Florida Highway Patrol dispatchers began receiving reports of a wrong-way driver at approximately 11:01 p.m., according to Lt. Channing Taylor.

Another homicide investigator traveling a short distance ahead of Morris spotted a vehicle moving south in the northbound lanes and alerted dispatch. Reports of the collision began arriving seconds later, leaving little time for authorities to intervene.

Investigators said the other driver, a 26-year-old resident of Kissimmee, had been traveling north before making a U-turn near a rest area north of the State Road 46 interchange. The vehicle then continued south against traffic before striking Morris’s vehicle head-on. Both vehicles caught fire.

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey said the driver had attended a wedding in the county’s beachside area earlier that day and was returning toward Kissimmee. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper was dispatched after the initial wrong-way reports, but the crash occurred before the trooper could arrive.

The reason for the U-turn remains unknown. Investigators are interviewing witnesses and examining evidence from the roadway to reconstruct the collision. Toxicology testing and an autopsy are expected to help determine whether impairment or a medical event contributed to the crash.

The Florida Highway Patrol’s statewide investigations and reconstruction team is handling the case. Investigators from outside Brevard County were brought in because local traffic homicide investigators knew Morris personally.

Morris, 55, previously worked for the Palm Bay Police Department before leaving law enforcement in 2011. According to Ivey, Morris became involved in church work before returning to the profession after his daughter decided to attend a police academy.

He joined the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in February 2021 and served as a deputy, field training officer, homicide investigator and polygraph examiner. At the time of the crash, he was responding alongside fellow homicide investigators to a shooting involving sheriff’s deputies earlier that evening in Mims.

Ivey remembered Morris as a well-liked colleague whose death has left the department mourning one of its own.

“Kevin was probably one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet in your life,” Ivey said during a Sunday briefing. “If you knew Kevin, you loved him.”