Mom to driver: Come forward
Woman killed in hit-and-run in Orlando on Nov. 6
This month, Sherri Winston should have been celebrating the 21st anniversary of the adoption of her 24-year-old daughter. Instead, she appeared Friday at an Orlando Police Department press conference to ask the person responsible for Lauren Winston’s death to “step up.”
“I want them to come forward or be brought to justice because that’s the right thing to do,” Winston said.
Lauren Winston was crossing the intersection of East Washington Street and Magnolia Avenue about 1 a.m. Nov. 6 when a 2015 black Dodge Challenger ran a red light and struck her, according to police.
The driver fled and the young woman was pronounced dead at the hospital.
“She was my little ride or die,” her mother told reporters Friday. “... She made single parenthood feel so effortless that I adopted another child. She literally changed my world.”
Police said they are seeking the public’s help to find the driver who struck and killed Lauren Winston before fleeing the scene. The car’s tag is B4MSF and believed to have damage to its hood, said Sgt. John Keefe.
OPD is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information. Anyone who can help is asked to call OPD at 321-235-5300 or Crimeline at 1-800-423-8477.
“We need your help to get justice for Lauren,” Keefe said. “... It’s unfair what happened… taking away this life from this family.”
Sheri Winston said her daughter had a “big heart” and was an animal lover — her death has left her mom caring for “a couple of stray pets that she had brought in and promised that she was just going get them back to health.”
“That’s who she was,” the grieving mother said.
Lauren Winston was a Freedom High School graduate and was working in retail at the Florida Mall, her mom said, adding that “this young woman was loved, she was cherished, she was contributing . ... She really was just starting to figure out what she wanted to do.”
When Keefe was asked why police had been unable to apprehend the driver, despite knowing the vehicle’s tag number and to whom it was registered, he said the person responsible likely is “hiding.”
“They’re not stepping up,” he said. “They’re hiding and that’s why we need people’s help.”
Sheri Winston said she wants the driver to fess up or be caught, not because she feels “vengeful” but because accepting responsibility is what she would have expected of her daughter had the roles been reversed.