LAUDERHILL, FLA. (WSVN) - Police have arrested a man who allegedly fled the scene of a fatal hit-and-run in Lauderhill with two children in his vehicle.
According to Lauderhill Police, 19-year-old Decarius Richards was involved in the early Monday morning crash along State Road 441.
“Any day could be your last day,” Jeff Yohanc, a witness, said. “We heard a big bang.”
A surveillance camera captured a red SUV making a left turn on State Road 441. The force of the impact flipped the SUV over several times, and the BMW came to rest just off 441.
“The red SUV was traveling south. The green BMW was traveling north,” Lauderhill Police Lt. Mike Santiago said. “At some point, they collided.”
Moments after the crash, the driver of the BMW could be seen trying to get out of the vehicle while a blue vehicle pulled up in the intersection.
A man then ran over to the BMW, who police called a friend of the BMW’s driver.
While other bystanders rushed to the flipped over SUV, the friend pulls the driver from the BMW, then rushes back to his own car carrying one of the two children who were inside the BMW.
The driver could be seen limping as he had his hands over the second child. Eventually, that driver walks away from the scene of the crash.
Meanwhile, good Samaritans, like Yohanc, try to help the couple in the overturned SUV.
“That’s when I heard the husband,” he said. “He was trying to wake up — I don’t know if it’s his wife or sister — and that got everyone a little choked up because he was trying to wake her up, and we said, ‘Hey, we got to get you out of here.’ It’s just a sad thing to see.”
The woman would not survive her injuries.
After spending Monday trying to locate the BMW’s driver and the two children, they eventually tracked them down to Broward Health Medical Center.
“The mother said the defendant called … and told her he was involved in a bad crash, and that her two kids were hurt but ‘not bad hurt,'” police said in the arrest report.
One boy had an injured ankle while the other suffered a broken nose and injured leg.
Richards is apparently the mother’s boyfriend and has been taken into police custody.
He faces several charges, including leaving the scene of an accident involving death and child neglect.
Police said they are continuing to investigate the incident.
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