Over a year following a tragic crash in Poinciana that claimed four lives, including three children, an arrest has been made—not of the underage driver, but his father. Richard Ferguson, 68, has been charged with four counts of vehicular manslaughter in connection with the September 2023 incident, where his 15-year-old son, who lacked a learner's permit, ran a stop sign and collided with an SUV, as reported by WESH.
The Florida Highway Patrol recounted the fateful evening, which took place at around 7 p.m. at the San Miguel Street and Laurel Avenue intersection. Before running the fatal stop sign, Ferguson had allowed his teenage son to drive his car and had moved another vehicle so the teenager could exit the driveway. Although he instructed the teens to wear their seatbelts and return quickly, his son drove quickly, resulting in the catastrophe. As per ClickOrlando, the crash tragically ended the lives of four, ranging from a one-year-old girl to a 50-year-old woman, and left a man with severe injuries.
In a statement detailed by ClickOrlando, Sabrina Hernandez, the bereaved mother and daughter of the victims, expressed a poignant mix of forgiveness and a steadfast resolve for justice at a vigil held shortly after the crash. "Are we not worth it in Poinciana? Do we count at all? What is the difference that you can go into another town and there’s cops everywhere?" Hernandez questioned the apparent lack of traffic enforcement. "I’m not going to stop until I get justice for my family. Because the same way he went ahead and ate the stop sign and killed my family, he still got to wake up today and my family didn’t," she told the publication.
According to the arrest affidavit from the Osceola County Sheriff's Office, Ferguson knowingly allowed the teen and his friends to use the car unsupervised. This information, combined with interviews with the involved teenagers, served as the basis for the vehicular manslaughter charges detailed in the WESH report. As the legal proceedings unfold, this case will continue to be updated with new information.
