85-year-old woman killed after colliding with bridge pillar off US-19
Just after 1 p.m., the Florida Highway Patrol said the St. Petersburg woman in a Cadillac STS was traveling northbound on the frontage road of US-19 when she lost control of the car.
Couple says they were forced to sit with dead woman on plane for hours
The driver veered left and struck a curb, causing her tires to deflate.
As the Cadillac continued into the median, the vehicle collided with a bridge pillar.
The woman was taken to a nearby hopsital where she later died from her injuries.
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The teenager was sitting in the front seat of a landscaping truck when he saw the flashing lights of a patrol car. A trooper motioned for his mother, who was driving, to stop in the middle of a three-lane road near Palm Beach Shores, surrounded by traffic and the high-rise condos that line the coast of South Florida. Kenny Laynez Ambrocio, 18, said the Florida Highway Patrol officer asked only where they were headed before he checked his mother's license and told her it was suspended. The trooper then turned his attention to Laynez Ambrocio and his two coworkers, none of whom had identification. He called Border Patrol for backup, and over the next 35 minutes, agents surrounded the white truck, asking if any of them were in the United States illegally. Laynez Ambrocio would later remember an officer telling his friends not to make phone calls, and another officer who told them they could not record the arrest. He had been showing his mother videos on TikTok, and his phone was lying next to him in the van. Quietly, he began to record. The cellphone video and police-car dash camera footage captured a scene playing out across Florida, but rarely before the public. The footage shows the aggressive tactics officers have deployed when arresting undocumented immigrants, including workers on their daily commutes, as they pull over cars without clear cause. Legal experts told the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times the footage raises concerns about potential violations of workers' constitutional rights protecting them against arbitrary police stops and racial profiling. As the Trump administration pushes a mass deportation campaign, local law enforcement and federal immigration agents are scouring the state for anyone who may have violated immigration law. Gov. Ron DeSantis said FHP troopers this year have arrested nearly 3,000 people later turned over for immigration processing. State and federal officials maintain that the May 2 traffic stop of Laynez Ambrosio and his co-workers was legal and followed procedures. Laynez Ambrocio, a senior at Palm Beach Lakes Community High School, told police he was a U.S. citizen, 'born and raised here.' But nervously, one of his coworkers said he was in the country illegally, and officers told them to open the door of the truck. 'You guys have no rights to do that,' the teen told the officers. An officer stuck his hand through the open car door window and unlocked it. Within seconds, officers put one of the men in a neck restraint and grabbed at Laynez Ambrocio, who kneeled on the pavement. Three officers wrestled with a third man while he was doubled over with his hands behind his back. They yelled at him to 'get on the ground.' 'No resistas,' Laynez Ambrocio shouted at his friend, who did not speak English. 'Don't resist.' Then, a taser buzzed as an officer stunned the man in the stomach. He fell to the pavement, shaking and screaming. An officer pushed Laynez Ambrocio to the ground, where all he could see was an officer's boots. He yelled that he had rights, that he was born in Palm Beach County. 'You have no rights,' an officer told him. 'You're a migo, brother.' In that moment, it didn't seem like Laynez Ambrocio had any rights. But he did have the video. Laynez Ambrocio and his friends were taken to a Border Patrol station in Riviera Beach, where he found other men who also appeared to be day laborers, some the same age as him. He could see the blood on his friend where he had been tased. Eventually, an officer told him he would be released because he is a U.S. citizen, but first she wanted to know if he had recorded the arrest. Laynez Ambrocio declined to unlock his phone, and he said he had not. As he was being released, officers told him he was being charged with a misdemeanor for obstructing arrest without violence, although the arrest report does not mention Laynez Ambrocio by name or describe his actions. Laynez Ambrocio was released around 5 p.m. that day. He said his two friends were transferred to Krome Detention Center in western Miami-Dade County. Laynez Ambrocio is the oldest son of an indigenous Mayan mother who moved to the U.S. about two decades ago from Guatemala. A copy of his birth certificate that he shared with the Herald shows he was born in Palm Beach County on Feb. 11, 2007. The county is home to a large Mayan community, many of whom came to the country as laborers seeking work, or as refugees fleeing a genocide targeting the Mayan people in Guatemala in the 1980s. To support his mother and two younger brothers, ages 5 and 10, Laynez began working in landscaping. Someday, he wants to become a barber and open a shop in his community. He didn't share the video of the traffic stop for weeks. Instead, after his arrest, in a pre-trial agreement, he was given 10 hours of community service and a four-hour anger management course, which he completed. Around Palm Beach County, news quickly spread about immigration agents targeting undocumented members of the large Guatemalan community, many of whom are Indigenous. At The Guatemalan-Maya Center, a social service agency off the highway in Lake Worth, staffers began tracking arrests. Mariana Blanco, the director of operations at the center, first heard from community members about a young man tased in the stomach by an officer. She met with Laynez Ambrocio's mother, who told Blanco about the video. Lying in bed later that night, Blanco watched the video on her phone in disbelief. 'I know how our people's rights are being violated, but to see it very clearly, I just thought, wow, the rest of the world has to see this, like everybody has to see this,' she told the Herald. 'Because we're living it constantly. For us, it's a reality for our community.' The video starts with a woman — it's unclear if she is FHP or a Border Patrol agent — asking in Spanish who is in the car illegally, and continues to record the exchange as Laynez Ambrocio gets out of the truck. It captures the tasering, the pain in the man's face as he cries out, and in the background, the teen calling out multiple times: 'No resistas.' 'That's not how you arrest people,' Laynez Ambrocio says to the officers. 'You can kindly take him out, that's it, it's simple.' The officers laughed about the traffic stop, joked about bonuses and floated the possibility of shooting immigrants at arrests. 'They're starting to resist more now,' an unidentified officer said. A voice, unclear if it's the same officer, adds: 'We're going to end up shooting some of them.' Juan Carlos Gomez, director of Florida International University's immigration law and human rights clinic, reviewed the footage from the arrest. An immigration attorney in Florida for over 30 years, he questioned the officers' probable cause to pull over the car or require identification from passengers other than the driver, and why they would tase a man already restrained. He pointed to the number of times Laynez Ambrocio tells his friend not to resist. 'How is that obstruction?' Gomez said. Laynez Ambrocio's arrest, he said, is 'a reminder of the danger of when the state and the federal government are not understanding that their role is to protect.' 'This is a child, this is a teenager,' said Gomez. 'To think that a U.S. teenager is not safe in his own country is a scary prospect.' Laurence H. Tribe, an emeritus professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, said that 'driving while looking Hispanic or driving while looking non-white is not a legitimate basis for being pulled over.' The Constitution protects the rights of citizens and noncitizens equally, with a few exceptions regarding voting rights and the right to hold office, he said. That includes the right against arbitrary arrest, unreasonable search and seizure and the right to due process. 'All of those rights belong to all persons in the United States, including those who are here illegally,' Tribe said. Laynez Ambrocio is not the first U.S. citizen caught in the crosshairs of an immigration arrest in Florida this year. In April, FHP troopers in Tallahassee used a now-suspended immigration law to arrest Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez, 20. Born in Georgia and stopped on the way to a roofing job with undocumented colleagues, Lopez Gomez was detained for more than 30 hours at the Leon County Jail before he was released. At a press conference on Aug. 1, FHP Director Dave Kerner said that Laynez Ambrocio had slammed the car door shut and locked it, barring officers from reaching the other men. 'They arrested that U.S. citizen for obstruction of justice,' Kerner said. 'The resistance was so severe, by the way, that the Border Patrol had to use a taser on one of the subjects.' But the cell phone, first obtained by the Palm Beach Post, and dash-cam footage obtained by the Herald shows no slammed doors, and an officer opening the door through the window. The video on Laynez Ambrocio's phone shows the use of force against the young men, a mother sobbing in the car and Laynez Ambrocio repeatedly pleading for his rights. About two weeks after the video became public, Palm Beach County Assistant State Attorney Pamela Ford decided not to prosecute the misdemeanor charge against Laynez Ambrocio. 'Upon review of the evidence and contact with the Arresting Officer, the State declines to prosecute. There is insufficient evidence to support a criminal charge,' Ford wrote on Jul. 29. The decision angered the FHP director, who said dismissing the case was a 'miscarriage of justice.' 'I do not think it is going to end up well for that prosecutor,' Kerner said. When asked about Kerner's comments and the prosecutor's decision, a Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office spokesperson said that the office had not dismissed the charges, it had declined to prosecute, and referred the Herald to the court filing. To date, the reason for the traffic stop remains murky. State officials say the stop was to conduct a 'commercial vehicle inspection.' A federal record reviewed by the Herald/Times says troopers stopped the truck for a 'traffic violation.' In an interview, Laynez Ambrocio said the trooper did not give them a reason for pulling them over. The dash camera footage starts with FHP trooper Steve Julien turning around and positioning himself in the middle of the highway, where he waits as the truck approaches and stops in front of him. From the moment the traffic stop started, Laynez Ambrocio said felt targeted for the color of his skin. 'They're abusing their power, and racially profiling every Hispanic they see. They're not going after criminals, they're going after landscapers and roofers,' Laynez Ambrocio told the Herald. The officers' conduct may have violated the agencies' own use of force policies. Both FHP and Customs have policies banning chokeholds or vascular neck restraints unless 'deadly force' is warranted. In the footage, a Border Patrol agent is shown holding one man with his forearm across a man's neck – and later, an FHP officer restrains the man who is tased, grabbing him around the neck area while the man is doubled down. Neither CBP nor FHP commented on the officers' use of neck restraints. According to the Customs policy manual, an agent may use a taser on a person actively resisting who could injure themselves or someone else – but not on people adjacent to traffic. The tasing took place in the middle of a three-lane highway. 'Law enforcement is facing a surge in assaults while doing their jobs—enforcing the law,' the Customs spokesperson said in a statement. 'Make no mistake, if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.' The video does not appear to show an assault on an officer. Customs did not respond when asked to provide more information about the alleged assault on an agent. FHP declined to comment on the troopers' conduct on the video, or if it was under review. In Laynez Ambrocio's case, FHP maintained that the arrest was part of a 'lawful federal and state investigation.' As he gets ready for his senior year to start, Laynez Ambrocio said he is traumatized after the arrest. He cannot bring himself to return to his landscaping job, leaving his mother and younger brothers without his income to help. When he considers going back to work, he thinks of the patrol cars. 'They're still out there,' he said. 'Waiting.'
