Police: Pair linked to murder crashed into car, killing woman

A police chase of two men linked to a Daytona Beach murder ended in the death of a woman in her 70s, who was killed after the pair crashed into her vehicle while fleeing Orlando police, OPD Chief Orlando Rolón said.

The men were taken to a hospital after the crash. Rolón said they were driving “recklessly” on Rio Grande Avenue while fleeing Orlando officers, who initially placed stop sticks in front of the vehicle to try and disable it.

But the pair avoided them, making their way from the area of John Young Parkway and LB McLeod Road, where they were initially spotted by OPD officers, onto Rio Grande Avenue.

As officers began to scale back their pursuit, the suspects crashed into the woman’s vehicle while trying to avoid hitting another car that was entering the roadway from a side street, Rolón said.

“The point here is that this could have all been avoided,” Rolón told reporters at a news conference Tuesday. “These individuals elected to elude the officers, and in the process took the life of an innocent person.”

In a news conference Tuesday, Daytona Beach police Chief Craig Capri said one of the men in the car, 29-year-old Willie Walker, had been identified as a person of interest in a fatal shooting Monday night outside of a business on west International Speedway.

The other man was believed to be at the scene during the shooting, which Capri said “appears to be narcotics-related.”

The car the pair was driving in Orlando, a 2019 blue Kia, was seen on surveillance video at the scene of the Daytona Beach murder, Capri said. Daytona officers just after the shooting spotted and pursued the vehicle, but the driver got away.

The Orlando Police Department’s automated license plate reader cameras spotted the vehicle Monday night, generating an alert because the vehicle was associated with the homicide in Daytona Beach.

While reviewing the notification Tuesday morning, officers spotted the vehicle and began to tail it.

Rolón said the pursuit began after the men drove around the stop sticks and began fleeing the officers.

“They did not initiate a traffic stop, but in the process, the individual began to elude the officers,” Rolón said at the news conference. “… It was definitely [an] approved pursuit, but initially they were just following the car.”

After the crash, the woman struck was taken to a hospital, where she died. Authorities have not publicly identified her.

Charges against the men by OPD, Daytona Beach police and the Florida Highway Patrol, which is investigating the crash, are pending, FHP spokeswoman Kim Montes said.