Florida Highway Patrol has officially reopened its investigation into the death of 19-year-old Kaylee Jean Kennedy, nearly two years after she was killed in a head-on crash on Highway 17 near DeLeon Springs. The decision, announced by family attorneys, comes after months of pressure from Kennedy's father, a Volusia County Sheriff's deputy who says the state's own paperwork on his daughter's death doesn't add up.
Kennedy died on September 1, 2024, following the crash in Volusia County, according to Allen-Summerhill Funeral Home. FHP's reopening of the case was first reported by FOX 35 Orlando, which cited attorneys for the Kennedy family as the source confirming the state's decision. Initial official reports had placed fault for the crash on Kennedy herself, but that conclusion is now the subject of fresh scrutiny.
Two Reports, Two Different Stories
The push to reopen the case began after Kennedy's father, Darren Kennedy, discovered that two separate crash reports produced by FHP troopers reached conflicting conclusions about who was at fault, and placed the physical location of the crash 1,700 feet apart from one another, according to WFTV. Darren Kennedy, who works as a Volusia County Sheriff's deputy, noted the discrepancies looked as though two entirely different troopers from different agencies had investigated the same crash independently, the station reported.
A formal notice submitted to FHP by the Kennedy family, their attorney, and a crash reconstruction expert went further, alleging that troopers failed to execute search warrants that had already been issued, pulled toxicology and phone records from only one of the two drivers involved, and never obtained license plate reader data that could have helped establish what happened. Those specific gaps became the technical foundation for the family's demand that the case be reexamined.
Sheriff Backs the Family's Push
Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood publicly supported Deputy Kennedy's call for a new investigation, saying the FHP reports contained too many inconsistencies to be left unchallenged. That kind of backing from a sitting sheriff added considerable local weight to a family's fight against a state agency's official findings.
The case doesn't exist in isolation. Some of the same FHP investigators involved in the Kennedy crash probe were also involved in an October 2025 wrong-way crash investigation on Interstate 4 that resulted in a wrongful arrest, the same WFTV reporting found. In June 2026, 23-year-old Lindsay Isaacs filed a federal civil lawsuit against FHP troopers after spending 13 days wrongfully jailed for a triple-fatality I-4 hit-and-run, despite her vehicle having no physical damage, according to WKMG ClickOrlando. Isaacs' charges were dropped only after a secondary FHP team identified the actual suspect.
From Resistance to Reversal
FHP's path toward reopening the Kennedy case wasn't immediate. In July, the agency sent the family an email acknowledging it was actively reviewing the case file and making progress, following a 30-day demand notice the family's legal team had submitted, per WFTV's reporting. That review culminated in this week's announcement that the investigation is formally back open.
Under Florida motor vehicle law, official crash reports serve as the foundational public record for determining fault and potential criminal liability, and FHP policy allows its specialized Traffic Homicide Investigation units to re-examine closed fatal crash files when material errors or unexecuted warrants come to light. That framework is what gave the Kennedy family's notice its legal teeth, and it's why correcting the official record now matters beyond just clearing up paperwork.
It remains unclear whether FHP will assign investigators entirely outside the original troop to handle the re-examination, what specific evidence — including the previously unexecuted search warrants and outstanding toxicology records — will now be reviewed, or whether fault determinations could shift enough to expose the other driver to criminal liability. For now, the Kennedy family's two-year campaign has produced the outcome they were seeking: a fresh look at the crash that killed their daughter.
