A tragic incident occurred in Tampa on yesterday morning when a 6-year-old girl was fatally struck by a pickup truck while crossing the street with her mother and brother. Hillsborough County Undersheriff Thomas St. John told WFLA, the family was hit by a vehicle driven by a 77-year-old man at the intersection of Mohr Road and Sheldon Road while they were "safely in the crosswalk and had signal to cross the road."
The driver, identified by Tampa Bay Times as Isain Ledesma, had a green light but "failed to realize" the pedestrians were crossing and struck them. The 6-year-old girl, Rosangela Segundo-Osorio, was pronounced dead at the scene, while her mother, Catalina Osorio-Jimenez, and 10-year-old brother, Peter Segundo-Osorio, were taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital with injuries that included broken bones.
It was further reported by FOX 13 News that the area where the crash occurred is not a school crossing zone and does not have a crossing guard, though the family was using a designated pedestrian crosswalk. Authorities stressed that despite having a green light, the driver was in violation of yielding the right-of-way to pedestrians.
Ledesma will be cited for the violation of right-of-way involving a death, bringing with it a $1,000 fine and a six-month suspension of his license, St. John mentioned. "It’s a terrible tragedy that this family is going to have to live with forever," he told FOX 13 News. In the wake of the crash, the undersheriff encouraged drivers to "put down your phones, stop texting, pay attention to the road in front of you," highlighting the importance of mindfulness especially in areas where families are known to cross the street.
Community members have expressed their sadness over the event, with one individual, Loraine Taffanelli, a mother of two, speaking to WFLA and saying, "It should hit harder to every mother out there, you know, every woman, just anyone who’s lost someone." Echoing this sentiment, Ehab Ismail, a father, told the same news outlet, "[She was] such a small young child, a soul, a whole life to live. And it’s just the way anything can just happen at an instant like that is, it’s very sobering, but it’s also very saddening as well."
