Unlicensed teen kills 3 kids and woman in crash, Florida cops say. His dad’s charged
A dad let his 15-year-old borrow a car despite not having a driver’s license, then his son became accused of killing four members of another family in a high-speed crash, Florida deputies said.
The dad, 68-year-old Richard Ferguson, is now charged with four counts of vehicular homicide in the September 2023 crash that claimed the lives of a 50-year-old woman, an 11-year-old girl, a 9-year-old boy and a 1-year-old girl, according to the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
“This is a horrible tragedy for the family of the deceased and for everyone injured,” Ferguson’s attorney, Caleb Robinson, told McClatchy News. “The whole incident is awful, terrible. I just want to express for both me and my client how saddened we are.”
Charges have not been filed against the son as of Feb. 20.
The day of the crash, Ferguson’s son was supposed to borrow the car briefly to run an errand with three friends and come right back, Osceola County Sheriff’s Office deputies wrote in an arrest affidavit. Ferguson moved one of the vehicles in the driveway so his son could leave in a Chevy Impala, but the group didn’t come right back, deputies said.
Instead, they went to another home and a basketball court, then Ferguson’s son got behind the wheel again and started driving at a high speed, deputies said.
Data from the car shows he was going between 76 and 83 mph in a 30 mph zone when he ran a stop sign and T-boned a Honda HR-V carrying five family members, according to investigators.
The family’s SUV hit a pole and turned onto one side, while the teen’s car skidded off the road and stopped in a ditch, deputies said. According to witnesses and vehicle data, the teen didn’t brake or take evasive maneuvers in the seconds leading up to the crash.
Witnesses rushed over to help, and one told deputies the 15-year-old driver asked if the occupants of the other vehicle were alive and if he was “going to jail for the rest of his life,” according to the affidavit.
The witness said it seemed like the boys’ family members were trying to get them to leave before first responders arrived.
One occupant of the Honda survived, but a grandmother and three grandchildren died, family told WESH.
“My son called me and said, ‘mommy, we are 15 minutes away’ and I said, ‘OK I’ll see you in a bit, I love you.’ And he said I love you too,” Sabrina Hernandez, the mother of the three children killed, said at a vigil, according to WKMG. “And I’m sitting on the couch waiting, and after like 30 minutes and I’m still hearing sirens and stuff, I was thinking to myself they were supposed to be here, they were supposed to be here.”
Osceola County is part of the Orlando metropolitan area.
This story was originally published February 20, 2025 at 6:42 PM with the headline "Unlicensed teen kills 3 kids and woman in crash, Florida cops say. His dad’s charged."