TAMPA — A 19-year-old man from Sioux City, Iowa, was struck and killed by a vehicle while standing on the side of the Howard Frankland Bridge on Thursday, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
A pick-up truck towing a trailer drifted onto the shoulder and struck the man as he stood along the fog line of the northbound shoulder just before 1 p.m., troopers said. He was a passenger in a vehicle that had broken down and was examining it when he was hit.
After the crash, driver Rosanio Rafael Bartolon-Morales of Temple Terrace kept going north on I-275 but was stopped by other drivers near W Kennedy Boulevard, according to the Highway Patrol.Troopers arrested him on charges of leaving the scene of a fatal crash and driving without a license resulting in death. Bartolon-Morales, 33, was booked into the Hillsborough County Jail.
The car, driven by a 16-year-old St. Petersburg boy, had been stopped along the outside shoulder of the bridge after it broke down, troopers said. The man who was hit died of his injuries at the scene.
The Highway Patrol did not release the name of the 19-year-old who was killed or the 16-year-old driver under its interpretation of Marsy’s Law, a state constitutional amendment designed to protect victims of crimes. The agency now omits the names of anyone involved in a crash, regardless of whether a crime was committed.