St. Johns County community supporting family who lost 18-year-old in crash
The Flagler Estates neighborhood and nearby Hastings area lost a man described as well-loved and warm-hearted to a crash right off I-95 early Monday morning.
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Florida Highway Patrol says the 18-year-old, named Julian, was driving on SR-207 when he hit the back of a pickup truck in the other lane by Deer Park Boulevard. The crash report says Julian hadn't been wearing a seatbelt and died after flying through the windshield. FHP says the truck driver wasn't hurt.
Action News Jax made contact with his mother, who was not able to interview for this story but asked we share the locations of two donation boxes she has since helped set up to raise money to pay for her son's funeral:
- Dollar General at Flagler Estates, on 9915 County Road 13 S, in Hastings
- Buzz Mart at Flagler Estates, on 9895 County Road 13 S, in Hastings
The donation boxes at both stores are located inside. Julian's family and his mother's coworkers at Dollar General tell Action News Jax that anyone is encouraged to give what they can.
Kelly Gill had an especially hard time hearing the news of this crash, after losing her 17-year-old daughter, Jaden, to a separate crash on SR-207 back in 2020, on Black Friday.
'It was 1,579 days ago,' Gill told Action News Jax, 'it never goes away.'
Gill says she had lost her husband less than a year earlier when he died of cancer on Christmas Eve in 2019. It made her daughter's loss hurt that much more, a pain she is now seeing recreated for another family.
'It's a daily pain. There's not a day that goes by where I don't wake up or go to bed not thinking about her,' said Gill.
Action News Jax requested the number of crashes on SR-207 over the last three years from the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office and Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV).
Neither agency has yet responded to Action News Jax, but we dug through the number of crashes in St. Johns County reported through FLHSMV in the last five years:
2025: 5 deadly crashes
2024: 23 deadly crashes
2023: 38 deadly crashes
2022: 33 deadly crashes
2021: 33 deadly crashes
2020: 36 deadly crashes
Parents around the county, like Gill, are now hoping to support Julian's family through their loss. Gill says no parent should ever have to handle this kind of pain alone.
'I'm here for you,' Gill said when asked if she had a message for Julian's mother, 'anybody who has lost a child, I'm here.'
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