Florida Highway Patrol troopers are searching for a driver who struck two vehicles, mounted a curb and ploughed into a group of teenagers walking on a sidewalk near the University of Central Florida in Orlando on Friday night, November 6 — and then fled the scene, leaving eight people injured, according to the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP).
Source: FOX 35 Orlando, from Florida Highway Patrol
The crash happened on Friday evening along University Boulevard in Orange County, less than a mile from the UCF campus and near the university's Knight Library area, a busy student corridor of shops, apartments and crossings in east Orlando. WKMG News 6 (ClickOrlando) reported that the multi-vehicle crash left several high-school students in hospital, and WESH 2 News reported that seven children were among the eight people hurt.
Source: WKMG News 6 / ClickOrlando
What troopers say happened, step by step
According to the FHP account carried by FOX 35 Orlando, the driver first struck two other vehicles on University Boulevard. The car then jumped the curb and hit a group of seven teenagers who were walking along the sidewalk. One pedestrian was critically injured, FOX 35 reported. Instead of stopping, the driver fled, and troopers were still searching for the driver on Saturday, with WKMG reporting on Saturday evening that a hit-and-run driver remained on the run and that eight teenagers had been sent to hospital.
No names have been released. The injured are teenagers, and Awaaz Punjab does not name or identify minor victims — the reporting so far gives only their ages as teenagers, the city of Orlando and the road where it happened. Their exact hospital conditions, beyond the one critical injury reported by FOX 35, had not been published by troopers as of Saturday evening.
Florida law treats leaving the scene of a crash involving injury as a serious felony offence, separate from whatever caused the crash itself. Troopers therefore investigate a hit-and-run on two tracks at once: what happened on the road, and why the driver left. Anyone who saw the University Boulevard crash, or has dashcam or phone video from the area on Friday night, is the kind of witness the FHP publicly appeals for in cases like this.
A student corridor that stays busy late
University Boulevard is the main commercial spine running past the University of Central Florida, one of the largest university campuses in the United States. On a Friday night the sidewalks near the Knight Library and the surrounding student housing, restaurants and shops carry heavy foot traffic — students and local teenagers walking between apartments, food outlets and bus stops. That is the setting in which a car leaving the roadway becomes so dangerous so quickly: the distance between the traffic lanes and the sidewalk crowds is only a curb.
For Orlando-area families, and for the many students who walk this corridor daily, the immediate questions are practical ones — whether the injured teenagers recover, whether surveillance or dashcam video from the boulevard's businesses identifies the fleeing car, and whether troopers can locate the driver before evidence goes cold. Hit-and-run identifications in Florida commonly turn on exactly that kind of video and on vehicle debris left at the scene.
What happens next
The FHP investigation is continuing and the search for the driver is active. Troopers have not yet announced a vehicle description in the reports carried so far, and no arrest had been reported as of Saturday evening, November 7. Awaaz Punjab will update this story when the FHP names the vehicle it is seeking or announces an arrest. The injured teenagers remain in hospital in Orlando, with one pedestrian reported critically injured.