Teen Found and Charged in Hit and Run
An 18-year-old who struck and killed a pedestrian drove off Monday night only to be caught by the Florida Highway Patrol three hours later. The male teen was taken into custody for leaving the scene of an accident.
The 65-year-old pedestrian from Jacksonville was found unresponsive at the scene of Timuquana Road and Seaboard Avenue where he had been walking on the side of the road. He died at the scene.
Law enforcement had a good clue where to look for the hit-and-run driver because troopers found a portion of a headlight and side-view mirror from a Ford F-150 pickup truck.
No word on how they found the male driver, but it was good work on their part. The teen driver is now jailed with bond set at $100,000.
If hit by a car going 40 mph, a pedestrian has an 85 percent chance of dying, so when striking someone with a car, it is almost certain there is some injury. To leave that pedestrian in the street with no idea of the extent of injuries or to potentially leave a fatally injured person on the road, turns an accident into a crime and in the eyes of the law is very serious. A conviction of a hit-and-run can bring a 15-year prison term.
His lawyer pled to the judge that the teen is a good kid and was planning to attend college and facing a felony charge and years in prison is extreme punishment. That argument may have fallen on deaf ears. Arguing that the teen is not a flight risk appears to be nonsense when describing someone who left the scene of an accident.
Nationally, almost 5,000 pedestrians were killed in motor vehicle accidents in 2003 with 70,000 injured. Speed and alcohol are often a factor in these cases.
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, in 2005 there were 576 pedestrians killed in the state, nearly 8,000 crashes that injured pedestrians and 8,626 pedestrian crashes. Florida has four of the five most treacherous metropolitan areas for walking and is the most dangerous state in the U.S. for pedestrians, according to the Pedestrian Danger Index, used when assessing the risk of walking in urban areas.
Orlando, Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville, and their surrounding areas, were the top four hazardous cities, followed by Memphis.
Our condolences go out to the family of the pedestrian and to the family of the driver who turned an accident into a felony.
Source reports: http://www.news4jax.com/news/21633958/detail.html; http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091109/lf_nm_life/us_walking_cities_deaths
