A 21-year-old woman of Hispanic descent was arrested on Sunday in South Florida, accused of fatally hitting a man in Dania Beach and fleeing the scene, according to the Broward Sheriff’s Office.
Keila Isabel Maldonado allegedly struck the victim —a man whose identity has not been disclosed— in the early morning of Saturday, shortly after 1:30 a.m., on the 200 block of Sheridan Street, east of US-1. Emergency services found him lying in the roadway and pronounced him dead at the scene.
What allowed the detectives to trace Maldonado was a forensic detail: an identification number found on a fragment of debris that the vehicle left at the scene.
That trail led to a 2025 Hyundai Sonata that appeared on the second floor of the Lexus of North Miami garage, a dealership located in North Miami Beach where the young woman worked. An employee at the location alerted authorities after noticing the damage to the vehicle.
According to the arrest report accessed by CBS News, Maldonado had taken the rental vehicle without the dealer's permission. When questioned by a coworker, she asked how much it would cost to repair the damages and acknowledged that she had hit someone on a scooter.
The report also notes that, after the impact, he drove to a nearby shopping plaza, observed for about an hour how the paramedics arrived, and left without speaking to the police.
Maldonado returned with the investigators to Broward County and was arrested. She faces two charges: failure to stop or remain at the scene of an accident resulting in death, and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.
A judge set her bail at $51,000. At the time of her arrest, she was held in the main jail of Broward and no lawyer was registered in her name.
The incident occurred in front of the New Bethany Tabernacle church. Its pastor, Edvard Legrand, reacted with alarm and made a call to drivers in the area: "Wherever you go, whether you are coming from the beach or just on the road, please reduce your speed a bit. Thirty seconds can change your life and someone else's."
Under Florida law, leaving the scene of a fatal accident is a first-degree felony, carrying a minimum mandatory sentence of four years in prison and a maximum of 30 years, along with a fine of up to $10,000 and a license revocation for at least three years. The statute does not require proving that the driver caused the death; it is sufficient to demonstrate that the accident resulted in death and that the driver failed to fulfill their legal obligations.
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