Osceola sheriff eyes more funds after deadly street race crash
Osceola County Sheriff Marcos López told reporters Tuesday that he needs more county funds to expand the agency’s traffic enforcement unit in the wake of a child being killed in a crash caused by alleged street racers.
The money would ideally pay for “30 to 40 more guys” to monitor aggressive drivers, which have raised concerns by agencies throughout the Greater Orlando area and Florida Highway Patrol, López said.
“When you’re short manpower, you have to prioritize everything you do,” he added. “So we won’t be able to be everywhere at once, but the more you call, the more the county commissioners are going to see we have an issue and maybe they’ll start giving us a little bit more money.”
A spokesperson for the Osceola County Board of County Commissioners didn’t return a request for comment.
López’s comments come after an alleged street race took the life of an 11-year-old girl on Friday and as Florida Highway Patrol announced several arrests of accused street racers in Orange County.
While he declined to address FHP’s investigation of the crash, which left two others with serious injuries, he cited numbers from a traffic enforcement campaign from January to March which shows the agency has issued 680 citations for offenses ranging from reckless driving and speeding to street racing.
López did not have data on arrests and citations for racing specifically, and record requests to the Sheriff ’s Office were not immediately acknowledged.
“No system is perfect, and we’re never going to have zero loss of
life,” López said.
FHP troopers said the girl’s death resulted from a rear-end collision when one of the alleged racers crashed a Dodge Charger into an SUV on U.S. 192 near Four Corners in Osceola’s west end. The driver and a passenger of the SUV suffered serious and critical injuries, respectively, while the driver who crashed into them, a 19-year-old man from Davenport, received minor wounds, according to an FHP report.
The other driver alleged to have also been racing, who authorities said is 17 years old and from Loughmann in Polk County, was uninjured after their vehicle was hit by debris from the crash.
No arrests have been made in connection to the crash and the identities of the drivers have not been released.
“The crash remains under investigation and charges are pending,” Lt. Kim Montes said Tuesday. She didn’t immediately respond to a question about the current condition of the victims. “Charges will be made at the completion of the investigation.”
Three arrests were made over the weekend by troopers related to two separate street races in Orange County, including a man accused of breaking the leg of a pedestrian he crashed into, Montes added. The arrests were part of an effort by state troopers since January 2020 to monitor street racing during overnight shifts in the area.
The Orange and Osceola sheriff ’s offices were made aware of the “uptick in this illegal activity” and began their own enforcement campaigns, Montes said. An inter-agency traffic enforcement task force issued more than 1,500 criminal and traffic citations and made 173 arrests, López said.
Jorge García-Santos, 22, was arrested after troopers said his car swerved and hit a pedestrian on a sidewalk Thursday while racing another car in Azalea park near South Goldenrod Road and Alachua Street. A woman initially claimed to be the driver, but a witness statement and glass found on García-Santos’ left shoulder led troopers to believe he was actually behind the wheel.
The woman, who has not been charged, said she was controlling the transmission from the passenger seat and grabbed the wheel to avoid a car that had cut them off.
García-Santos faces charges of reckless driving causing serious bodily injury and giving false information to police. He’s in the Orange County Jail without bond due to a probation violation stemming from an April 2020 aggravated assault case.
In a separate incident Friday night, two people were charged after troopers said they were seen starting a race with two other vehicles on State Road 417 near Curry Ford Road.
Ricardo Vázquez-Miranda, who was driving a Mustang to which troopers were alerted, was charged with racing on a public roadway. Meanwhile, his passenger, Alejandro Narváez, was charged with racing and being a passenger in a street race, the latter after troopers saw him “stick his right arm out of passenger side window and make a ‘chopping’ motion,” indicating the beginning of the race, according to the FHP report. Both men have since bonded out of jail, records show.