Police Search for Person of Interest in Deadly Fla. Daycare Hit-and-Run
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iStock/Thinkstock(ORLANDO, Fla.) — A multi-county manhunt is under way in Florida.
Police across Florida are looking for Robert Corchado, the driver of an SUV that abandoned the scene of a wreck at a daycare center in an Orlando, Fla., suburb Wednesday that killed one child and injured 14 others.
Police said Wednesday the SUV hit another vehicle, sending it careening into the front of the daycare. That car pinned a little girl underneath it.
“I heard a crash and I see the black car run up over the sidewalk and into the school,” one witness of the crash told ABC’s Orlando affiliate, WFTV. Then, he said, the Durango took off.
The child who had been pinned under the wrecked car was rushed to the hospital, but later died from her injuries. Another 11 children were taken to the hospital for their injuries. Two of them are still listed in critical condition. One adult was also transported to a hospital for treatment.
The driver of the car that went into the building was not hurt, but the impact of the Durango hitting the car was so great that the car smashed all the way into the daycare center to the back of the building.
“We saw pretty much just a hole in the front of this building, and you couldn’t even see the car inside it, was that far in the back,” said John Mulhall of Orange County Fire & Rescue.
According to investigators, Corchado fled the scene, ditched his vehicle, and had a friend or an acquaintance drive him to a local Enterprise, where he rented another car. He then hit the road, setting off the manhunt by law enforcement officers across the state.
Mulhall praised his department for an amazing job getting kids to hospitals and caring for those who remained in the center.
“This was a very intense scene and it’s very difficult because so many firefighters have children of their own. So to be able to put that into a back pocket, their own personal emotions and treat the children and the injured with the care that they deserve is quite impressive,” Mulhall said Wednesday.
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