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Girl dies after riding bicycle into traffic

A driver is racked with emotion when she cannot avoid hitting the 12-year-old on U.S. 92 in Seffner.

By S.I. ROSENBAUM
Published March 10, 2006

SEFFNER - Beverly Evans was shaking, bouncing up and down in anxiety on a rusty chair by the side of U.S. 92, her face streaked with tears.

An hour before, at 4:46 p.m. Thursday, her 1999 Buick Regal had struck and killed a 12-year-old girl named Jennifer Romo of 11114 U.S. 92, Seffner.

Evans, 28, of 6906 Castle Gate Drive in Tampa, did not yet know that the child was dead. But she refused to leave the crash site.

Her family gathered around her, handing her a bottle of water, stroking her hair. They told her she had to go to the hospital to be checked for injuries.

"I don't want to go," Evans told them. "I don't want to go."

Across the street, Jennifer's pink bicycle lay abandoned in front of a Citgo station.

Sam Patel, 42, the Citgo station owner, said he knew Jennifer by sight.

She would stop at his convenience store almost every day at 4:30 to buy candy and soda, he said: a small girl with hair down to her back.

"She's a nice girl," he said. "Very sweet."

She would always greet him and called him "sir," he said.

Across the street at Slusmeyer's Tire City, mechanic John Fraczek, 22, said he'd seen the collision.

Jennifer had waited in the parking lot until a car in the nearer lane went by, Fraczek said. Then she pulled into the street, and into the path of Evans' car.

Evans swerved, but hit Jennifer, he said. "I saw her fly up in the air and hit the ground," he said.

Evans' car then struck a black Nissan parked in front of the tire shop.

Fraczek said Jennifer was one of several children from the neighborhood. There's no crosswalk or traffic light, he said, but they cross the busy road anyway.

Jennifer was taken to Tampa General Hospital, where she died, a sheriff's official said; no charges are pending.

As sheriff's deputies investigated the crash site, none of them told Evans' family that Jennifer was dead. They helped her to a waiting ambulance. She could barely stand. Halfway there, she collapsed sobbing into a relative's arms.

"We're going to stay right here and see how that little girl is doing," one woman told Evans. "We're going to let you know as soon as we hear something."

[Last modified March 10, 2006, 01:57:36]