JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – News4Jax mapped every hit-and-run crash in 2015 Duval and St. Johns counties to find trouble spots where these crashes happen most frequently.
Duval County hit-and-run crashes
On any given day in Duval County, 10 drivers are involved in hit-and-run crashes somewhere on our roads or in parking lots. While no area is immune to these crashes, some of which can be fatal, by pouring over police reports and plotting each crash on a map.
News4Jax counted 1,403 hit-and-run crashes involving injury or a fatality in Duval County in 2015. Pin by pin, we analyzed the locations and asked questions about factors contribute to the crimes.
The map showed that the most hit-and-run crashes in Jacksonville last year were reported downtown. According to Jacksonville Sheriff's Office reports, there were 25 crashes between South Myrtle Avenue and Main Street last year. The recurring locations of the crashes were along Bay and Ocean Streets, as well as areas along Main and Union streets.
Farther east, traveling along the Arlington Expressway, News4Jax tracked 13 near where Arlington Road and Arlington Expressway intersect. The crashes occurred both during the day and at night, some ending with serious injuries.
Officer Melissa Bujeda with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office came to WJXT to look at the crash map.
"When you have a lot of people coming in, going to work, you're going to have more accidents happen," Bujeda said. "A lot of times in certain areas, people do not have good licenses, they are driving stolen vehicles, (and) sometimes areas that have a higher crime rate have a higher number of hit-and-runs."
Cheryl Muzzarelli lost the man she intended to marry when he was involved in a hit-and-run crash last year.
"Randall Scott Ewing, 45 of Jacksonville, Florida, formerly of Decatur, died," Muzzarelli read from his obituary.
Ewing was killed Feb. 22, 2015, at the intersection of Phillips Highway and Emerson. Police later arrested and charged Jose Morales, who never had a driver's license, with leaving the scene of an accident involving a fatality.
"How can somebody sleep at night? Why didn't he stop?" Muzzarelli asked.
Another Duval County hot spot is Atlantic and Beach boulevards, heading toward the beach. News4Jax mapped more than four dozen hit-and-run crashes there last year.
On the beach side, along A1A, News4Jax counted 14. Bujeda said restaurants, bars and alcohol all factors.
"It varies from: they are intoxicated; they are on drugs; they know they've been texting; their license isn't good or if they get another citation, (it'll) put them over the points to maintain a license," said Bujeda. "But none of those are worth a felony for leaving the scene of an accident."
Other roads with a large number of hit-and-runs in 2015 include J. Turner Butler at Southside Boulevard and Normandy Boulevard at I-295.
Along Argyle Forest Boulevard on the Westside, 14 drivers were involved in crashes where the person at fault didn't stop.
Farther north, near Lem Turner and Dunn Avenue, there were six hit and runs. That area is not far away from along Pitts and Slay Road, where 25-year-old Michael England lost his life on May 18, 2013.
"My life changed forever. I will always remember that day," England's mother, Bridget Massie, said. "They told me that he was walking down the road and (the driver) hit him at a high rate of speed."
To this day, police have not caught the driver that killed England.
"I don't understand how someone can hit someone and keep going," said Massie. "It seems like it just doesn't end. It keeps happening. These drivers don't have any responsibility."
TARIK MINOR'S VIDEO REPORTS: Part 1 | Part 2
FHP DATA: 2015 hit-and-run fatalities in northeast Florida
St. Johns County hit-and-run crashes
During the four weeks of our News4Jax investigation, we also plotted every hit-and-run crash report from 2015 involving injury or death in St. John's County. The data revealed one part of the county that is plagued by the hit-and-run epidemic.
While the city of St. Augustine's 12 square miles is a tiny fraction of the county's 821 square miles, but the map showed that 201 of the 556 hit-and-run crashes in the Florida Highway Patrol's database were investigated by the St. Augustine Police Department.
Authorities said that while the numbers are high, the city's crashes are rarely deadly. Along the county's sprawling roads, outcomes can be much worse.
Jo-Lee Manning knows the heartache of losing a child to a hit-and-run driver on a St. Johns County road. Her 15-year-old daughter, Haley Smith, was killed in 2013. The driver responsible was never caught.
"You definitely realize that things can happen, you always think about the worst, because you know it can happen," said Manning.
Haley was hit while walking to a friend's house along Kenton Morrison Road, just 3 miles outside the St. Augustine city limits. Troopers said the driver was traveling at a high rate of speed at the time of the collision and left the scene. Haley was just weeks away from her 16th birthday.
"Help us understand how someone could just leave her, and not care, and not stop, understand what was so important in their life at that moment," said Manning. "Were they drinking, were they impaired, were they texting, what was going on?"
Since Haley's death, authorities in St. Johns County have investigated six fatal crashes.
"It's sickening. You open up Facebook and there's another one. You know what the family is going through and how hard it is for them," Manning explained.
In 2015, all hit-and-run fatalities occurred on roads outside of the St Augustine city or St. Augustine Beach limits.
News4Jax showed St. Johns County Sheriff's Office Cmdr. Chuck Mulligan our map of every hit-and-run crash that involved an injury in the county. Our mapping in the rural areas revealed no specific area of concern or pattern, but inside city limits, we noted a number of trouble spot where hit-and-runs occur time and time again.
"When you get out of the compactive roadway structures that require lower speeds and bumper-to-bumper traffic, once on the open roads, on highways or interstate highways, the speeds increase. So when the crashes occur, they are much more dynamic," Mulligan said.
Mark Samson, of St. Augustine police described the hit-and-runs in their jurisdiction.
"A lot of these are on our main thoroughfare, Anastasia Boulevard, and a lot of them are on the Bridge of Lions," Samson said. "So we have parking there so I'm not sure what time they happened, but that could be associated with people in restaurants and a bar, that kind of thing."
We found the thoroughfare with the most hit-and-runs in the city of St. Augustine was North Ponce DeLeon Boulevard, which is U.S. 1 just north of the downtown area. We counted a dozen collisions where the driver at fault didn't bother to stop, and a pedestrian or driver was injured.
Another hot spot for hit-and-runs was just across the Bridge of Lions, where News4Jax tracked six hit-and-run crashes with injuries in 2015. In the historic district of St. Augustine, there were 10 hit-and-runs, including two drivers who hit a tourist train.
"I think a lot of it is, we are a historic town, and we have a large population that walks, and a large population that drives around town looking for a place to park," Samson said. "So you start putting those things together, and looking at old buildings and the trains, and they get distracted, and unfortunately we do have some who leave the scene."
Police said the only positive aspect of the crashes in the city is that they occur at slower speeds and result in less serious injuries. Still, a handful county-wide crashes remain unsolved, just like the death of Haley Smith.
"It's life changing. Everything about our life has changed," said Haley's mother.
Throughout the state of Florida, there were 92,000 hit and runs and 186 deaths in 2015. More than half of the people killed were pedestrians walking along the roads. Drivers ages 18 to 27 committed over one-third of all the accidents, and 70 percent of those drivers arrested were men.
Legislation recently passed in Florida increases the penalties for drivers who leave the scene of an accident to a minimum mandatory 4-year sentence. One of the sponsors of the legislation says it's still too early to determine if the new law is working. To the families who spoke with News4Jax, a 4-year minimum mandatory sentence is still not enough for the crime they call a local crisis.
View an interactive version of Tarik Minor's map of all 2015 hit-and-run crashes in northeat Florida involving injuries or deaths: