The Palm Beach Post

» Driver injured in chaos out of hospital,

Many details under wraps amid ongoing investigat­ion.

- By Eliot Kleinberg Palm Beach Post Staff Writer ekleinberg@pbpost.com Twitter: @eliotkpbp

One of two motorists hospitaliz­ed in Wednesday’s chaotic crash and shooting on Interstate 95 was still hospitaliz­ed Friday, while the other has been released, the sheriff ’s office said.

The update comes as five different law-enforcemen­t agencies try to sort out the chaos that unfolded in minutes and closed down the highway’s northbound lanes between Lake Worth and Boynton Beach for more than six hours.

They are trying to figure out just how many people Hugo Steven Selva shot, or shot at, before Wednesday’s murder-chase-crash melee that ended with a Palm Beach County sheriff ’s deputy killing Selva on Interstate 95, and finding Nicole Marie Novak, 26, his girlfriend and the mother of their 3-month-old daughter, dead in the passenger seat.

The sheriff ’s office has not yet identified, or divulged, injuries or conditions for two motorists who were hospitaliz­ed in the crashes, or even said to which hospital the two were sent. And it has not identified any of the motorists in the six to eight cars that were struck. And it will not say how many cars were involved.

Authoritie­s said they believe Selva, 22, shot one man — identified Friday as Charles Brown Jr., 32 — on Tuesday afternoon in West Palm Beach, and then shot another man, Anthony Fonti, early Wednesday in Boynton Beach.

About 9 a.m. Wednesday, the sheriff ’s office said, Selva fatally shot Novak outside a Lake Worth grocery store. They said Selva then shoved her into his SUV before racing the wrong way down I-95 and causing three head-on crashes near Lantana Road.

Moments later, the sheriff ’s office said, an FHP trooper fired a Taser, but it either didn’t work or had no effect on Selva. PBSO Deputy Connor Haugh then fatally shot the man.

Deputies dragged Novak from the smoldering car, but she was dead, authoritie­s have said.

And there might be more. Boca Raton police have not ruled out the possibilit­y that Selva was the person who shot a Boca Raton man about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday on southbound Interstate 95 near Yamato Road.

Wednesday’s shooting on Interstate 95 does not mark the first time Haugh, 35, has fired his gun in the line of duty.

In May 2008, while with the Boynton Beach Police Department, he and a fellow officer fired on a car that police said two men had hijacked moments earlier from an 81-year-old woman at knifepoint in Leisurevil­le, off Boynton Beach Boulevard west of I-95. Haugh had approached the car but was nearly struck when the driver hit the gas and the front end swerved. The car careered into a fence at Poinciana Elementary School. No one was hurt, and two alleged carjackers were arrested.

PBSO has said that of all its deputies on the scene, only Haugh fired a weapon. But citing its continuing investigat­ion, it has not said how many times he pulled the trigger and has not said how many bullets struck Selva or where. And it has not said whether Selva was holding a gun when he was shot.

FHP also has not identified the trooper who deployed his Taser before the deputy shot Selva.

Haugh is on standard administra­tive leave after Wednesday’s shooting, which PBSO has arranged for the Florida Department of Law Enforcemen­t to review. Haugh worked in Boynton Beach from 2005 to April 2016, then joined PBSO.

Wednesday’s pandemoniu­m lasted less than an hour but ended the turmoil-filled lives of Selva and Novak. Selva shows no criminal record in Florida, but in December 2016, his grandmothe­r said in court documents that he had tried to kill her. And Novak spent more than two years in state prison on drug and burglary conviction­s.

In Tuesday afternoon’s West Palm Beach incident, Charles Brown Jr. suffered non-life-threatenin­g injuries when he was shot near the Dutchman Motor Lodge, on South Dixie Highway south of Forest Hill Boulevard. He was treated at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach. Police said at the time that Brown likely knew his shooter.

In the Boynton Beach incident early Wednesday, Anthony Fonti, 21, is expected to survive his injuries. Boynton Beach police have said they still are working to “100 percent confirm the connection” to Selva.

The update comes as five different law-enforcemen­t agencies try to sort out the chaos.

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