Edgardo Joel Rosado Perez (Falkenburg Road Jail) and the location where he allegedly struck and killed a high school student on Wednesday (WTSP screenshot)
A 41-year-old man in Florida is accused of causing the death of a 18-year-old pedestrian, fatally hitting the high school student while he was driving away from the site of another accident.
Edgardo Joel Rosado Perez was arrested on Wednesday and charged with leaving the scene of a crash where someone died, based on records reviewed by Law&Crime.
According to a statement from the Florida Highway Patrol, Rosado Perez was in a 2018 Hyundai sedan at around 7:15 a.m. and had just dropped off his 18-year-old daughter at Bartow High School when he was in a minor crash with a Chevrolet SUV and immediately fled. Bartow High is about 45 miles east of Tampa, Florida.
The driver — later identified as Rosado Perez — was fleeing northbound on Jackson Street and approaching Pearl Street “at a high speed” when he hit an 18-year-old male student who was walking to school.
After hitting the teen with his vehicle, Rosado Perez again fled the scene, according to authorities. The Barstow High School student, known as Zachariah Clabough, died from his injuries.
Investigators from the Florida Highway Patrol say they tracked the Hyundai sedan back to Rosado Perez’s home on Polly Lane in South Lakeland, where they found the vehicle parked inside of his garage. They soon learned that Rosado Perez had returned home after the two hit-and-run incidents and then left again, this time driving his other car, a blue 2017 Ford Fiesta.
Authorities found the Ford Fiesta in a parking lot at the Brandon Mall, which is about 30 miles west of the high school. Troopers found Rosado Perez in the mall and arrested him. He was taken to the Falkenburg Road Jail in Hillsborough County where he is currently held without bond while waiting to be transferred back to Polk County, based on records.
According to The Ledger, one of the newspaper’s reporters visited Rosado Perez’s home after the hit-and-runs and reportedly saw two troopers in the driveway and a dark blue Hyundai sedan in the garage. The report noted that the vehicle’s hood was “badly dented” and the windshield was “smashed, with a large hole on the driver’s side.” The troopers asked the reporter not to take photos of the vehicle as it was involved in an ongoing investigation.
Taylor Smith, who lives on the street where Clabough was killed, told the Ledger that he heard the collision from his home and ran outside to see what had happened, but the car had already fled the scene. He told the newspaper that it seemed like the driver had ignored a stop sign and sped away down Jackson, which has a posted speed limit of 25 mph.
A GoFundMe for Clabough’s funeral had raised more than $14,000 as of Thursday afternoon with the family saying, “Please help us give Zachariah a nice burial.”