A 41-year-old Port St. Lucie man will spend much of the next decade behind bars for a deadly pre-dawn hit-and-run in Boca Raton.
Carlos Madeira Cardoso was sentenced Wednesday to seven years in Florida state prison after pleading guilty to leaving the scene of a crash that killed 65-year-old pedestrian Martin Albert Barry in April 2024. The judge also handed down a concurrent five-year term for tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and ordered Cardoso's driver’s license suspended for three years.
The collision happened in the early-morning hours of April 6, 2024, at the intersection of State Road 7 and Sandalfoot Boulevard. Barry was struck at about 4:10 a.m., taken to an area hospital and pronounced dead around 5:51 a.m., according to The Boca Raton Tribune.
Investigators determined Cardoso was driving a 2011 GMC Acadia when it hit Barry. Instead of staying at the scene, they say, he took off. He later entered a direct guilty plea to leaving the scene of a crash involving death and to tampering with or fabricating physical evidence. For the leaving-the-scene count, the court imposed a seven-year sentence that includes a four-year mandatory minimum term, while the five-year tampering sentence will be served at the same time. Those details were reported by BocaNewsNow.
Sentence Details And Court Orders
Court records show the judge formally adjudicated Cardoso guilty and attached several collateral penalties. Along with prison time, Cardoso faces a three-year suspension or revocation of his driving privileges and other post-release conditions. Restitution will be decided at a later hearing, the records indicate, according to The Boca Raton Tribune.
Florida Law On Leaving The Scene
Florida does not treat deadly hit-and-run crashes lightly. By statute, leaving the scene of a crash that results in death is a first-degree felony, with a mandatory minimum prison term of four years. Judges must also revoke the offender’s driving privileges for at least three years. Courts can only move away from that mandatory minimum in narrow circumstances and must spell out any departure on the record, according to the Florida Statutes.
How This Fits In Locally
Across Florida, sentences in fatal hit-and-run cases can look wildly different, depending on the county and the facts of each crash. In some recent cases, juries and judges have signed off on prison terms that last only a few years, while others stretch well into double digits.
One Lee County driver was sentenced to 15 years last November after fleeing a crash that killed a bicyclist, according to Gulf Coast News. In another case closer to home, a previous Boca Raton fatality involving a bicyclist led to a 12-year sentence, as reported by WPTV.
For Cardoso, the case was built by investigators with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Traffic Homicide Unit. The sentencing hearing on Wednesday effectively wrapped up the criminal side of the April 2024 crash, with only restitution issues still to be sorted out, according to BocaNewsNow.
