In September 2022, Deputy Michael Hartwick was working an overnight detail on I-275 near Exit 30, standing on the shoulder to protect a construction crew, when a front-end loader veered into him and kept going. He died doing what Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri later described simply: protecting others from harm, even at great personal risk to himself.
Hartwick had blocked off the two inside southbound lanes of the highway and was posted on the shoulder when the front-end loader, moving at roughly 20 mph, struck him in September 2022, according to wusf.org. He had spent 19 years with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office by the time of his death, the outlet reported. The operator did not stop.
That operator fled the scene and was tracked down after what the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office described in a social media post as a nine-hour manhunt, a detail that differs from other accounts of the search. Baynews9 reported the search lasted about eight hours, while fox13news.com also described it as a nine-hour manhunt. He initially gave the name Victor Vazquez-Real before investigators identified him as 32-year-old Juan Ariel Molina-Salles, per the same wusf.org report.
A Guilty Plea and a 12-Year Sentence
Molina-Salles was ultimately sentenced to 12 years in prison, minus time already served, for the hit-and-run death of Hartwick, according to a baynews9.com report from March. The later baynews9.com account characterized it as a second-degree felony charge of leaving the scene of an accident with death.
The Gateway Expressway construction project along I-275 was underway when Hartwick was killed.
A Highway Named in His Memory
The designation took effect July 1, 2023, making the stretch of I-275 between mile markers 30 and 31 in Pinellas County the Deputy Sheriff Michael Hartwick Memorial Highway, according to patch.com. The designation marks the same stretch of roadway where Hartwick was standing guard the night he was killed.
In a post from the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office
, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri reflected on why Hartwick was out on that shoulder in the first place. “Deputy Michael Hartwick died protecting others, trying to keep others from being hurt or killed, which is what cops do even when it means great personal danger to themselves,” Gualtieri said.
