Report: Florida Rife With DUI Fugitives
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Daymarie Melendez has been waiting almost five years for justice.
That's how long it's been since she last saw her daughter, Krystine, alive.
"You know when you wake up and you see the sunlight come into your room and you get this happy joy. That's what she was. Like a sunlight. Like a ray of sunlight," Melendez said.
Krystine Bermudez was just 20 years old in July 2011 when the motorcycle she and her friend Yaisey Cardentey were riding was struck by a drunk driver in West Miami-Dade.
"It was like an outerbody (sic) experience. Like he was telling someone else your daughter is dead," she said. "How can she be dead? She's full of life!"
Krystine died at the hospital. Her friend Yaisey died on scene.
But the driver of the van that him them, whom the Florida Highway Patrol identified as Eusebio Duarte Guido, survived.
He wasn't immediately arrested, despite witnesses saying he appeared intoxicated and his prior history of DUI convictions.
A warrant has been issued for his arrest, but Duarte Guido remains a fugitive of the law.
"You can have a person that is dead and you get no justice," Melendez said.
According to a first-of-its-kind analysis by the Naples Daily News, Duarte Guido isn't the only DUI suspect in Florida to avoid prosecution in recent years.
Records show between 2005 and 2014, at least 45 suspects accused of killing 57 people in DUI manslaughter cases across the state are fugitives.
Ten of them are running from cases in Miami-Dade. Three fugitives are believed to be responsible for deadly crashes in Broward.
"There's a high level of proof that we have to prove in a courtroom to make these charges stick. We're not trying to overcharge anybody, or under charge anybody," FHP Lt. Greg Bueno told the Naples Daily News.
Lt. Bueno says law enforcement must establish probably causes – that a suspect was driving, drunk and at-fault – before making an arrest.
If an arrest is made prematurely, a suspect's right to a speedy trial could be in jeopardy.
"The unfortunately reality is that sometimes cases take time," Bueno said. "We build a case to make an arrest. If we make an arrest because everyone is pressuring us to do this, we're gonna have a problem."
Naples Daily News' investigation included a thorough review of state court data, traffic homicide case files and crash databases.
In addition to the fugitive findings, the newspaper also discovered out of more than 1,500 DUI manslaughter cases in the past decade, about three-fourths of the drivers weren't immediately arrested.
In six such cases in Miami-Dade and Broward, it took roughly three years or longer for an arrest to be made.
According to Lt. Bueno, that's a tiny fraction of their overall caseload.
"At the end of the day. Our true north here, our gauge, is we want to do as thorough a job as possible so we can ultimately serve justice to the family and hold that person accountable," Bueno said.
A traffic homicide investigation report shows FHP believes Carlos Lacayo was behind the wheel in a crash on I-95 that claimed the lives of five people in March 2011.
Documents show his blood alcohol content was .127, well above the legal limit, four hours after the crash.
FHP says Maria Chaison is to blame for the 2012 crash that killed 25-year-old Juan Velez.
The investigation revealed her blood alcohol level was .2, more than twice was allowed by law.
Like Duarte Guido, both Lacayo and Chaison have managed to avoid arrest for years.
"How could you take a life and hide!? Run!?" Melendez wonders. "I live with this pain every day. I wake up every morning, and I'm like, oh, you're here again. Your daughter is not here. What's wrong with this picture?"
Melendez says she believes Duarte Guido is still in South Florida, and she's even gone with his picture to his neighborhood asking people about him.
She says his family still lives in the home, but, like investigators, she hasn't had any luck tracking him down.
If you have information or know the whereabouts of any of the fugitives mentioned here, contact FHP by clicking here.
To read Naples Daily News' complete "Free to Flee" investigation, click here.
