Jim Gill(SARASOTA, Fla.) — A Florida driver was arrested on Saturday after allegedly leaving the scene of a serious accident earlier this week that left a college student with brain injuries.
Zachari Brock, 24, of Bradenton, is facing felony charges for leaving the scene of a crash involving serious injury and driving without a valid license involving a serious injury for the Thursday morning incident, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
The other driver, 19-year-old Jackson Kelley, remains hospitalized with “severe brain trauma,” his father, Michael Kelley, told ABC News.
“It’s day to day,” Michael Kelley said of his son’s health. “Every little thing that is positive you try to embrace that. But it’s going to be a struggle and it’s going to be a long time.”
Authorities said that Brock was in the center lane on U.S. 41 waiting to make a left turn into the driveway of the RaceTrac gas station as Kelley was driving an Audi in oncoming traffic, police said.
The alleged reckless driver, in a 2003 Kia Sedona, started to make the left turn and “traveled into the path of” the teen’s car — colliding with its left rear, according to the police report.
“I really wouldn’t know what to say, because I don’t know the man,” Michael Kelley said of Brock. “Who knows what lens he has that he’s looking through. I can’t see through his lens. I don’t know what in his life has caused him to do something like that. I’m not going to say he’s a bad person — he made a mistake.”
The crash -— captured on surveillance video from a businesses along U.S. 41 — showed Kelley’s car flip several times into the parking lot of the Lantern Inn & Suites. The car came to a complete stop by the concrete wall that surrounds the hotel’s outdoor pool and a parked Hyundai Elantra that was pushed into two other parked cars, police said.
Brock was also charged with a traffic citation for making a left turn in front of oncoming traffic, police said.
Kelley was on his was to class at the State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota, his father said.
Brock was allegedly seen driving away from the scene, but after “an exhaustive criminal investigation” Florida Highway Patrol caught up with him, the police said.
“When people watch that video, like, ‘Oh my god, did you see that?'” Michael Kelly said. “Well there’s more to it than the video or to that guy. There’s more to it than that man getting arrested. There’s a whole lifetime we have to deal with now.”
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