FOLIO
Words by Andrew Carswell
That morning started out like any other: 16-year-old Alondra Martinez, a bright, intelligent student at Atlantic Coast High School, was walking to her bus stop, on her way to school.
She was working part-time at Chick-fil-A, saving up for the car she had always wanted, a VW Beetle, but until she could afford the Beetle, she rode the bus. She enjoyed attending church, was an animal lover, and of course, like any teenager, she loved her phone.
Martinez never made it to school that day.
She didn’t even make it to the bus stop, and it wasn’t because she was skipping or sick.
Martinez was hit and killed on her way to the bus stop on the morning of Jan. 17, 2025. A driver hit her as she was walking, and she later died at the hospital. Instead of calling 911 and waiting with her, he placed Martinez in his vehicle and drove her to a medical facility, himself.
Her sister Alejandra Martinez wishes that he wouldn’t have.
“I wish he would have just called 911…” she said in a recent interview. While the driver was well intentioned, many have wondered what would have happened if he had called 911. Would Alondra have survived?
Had he called 911, first responders would have attempted to provide life-saving measures at the scene of the accident, as well as while she was being transported to the hospital. Instead, she was put into a stranger’s car, as she was dying, without any sort of medical treatment, and by the time she got to the hospital, it was too late.
Alejandra has started a GoFundMe, to help with her family’s funeral expenses.
Unfortunately, Martinez’s case is just one of many.
We are just weeks into 2025, but several students have been hit at or around bus stops in our area already this year. On Jan, 10, 14-year-old Maslin Mooney narrowly escaped death when he was hit by a car in St. Johns County, as he was on his way to Gamble Rogers Middle School. Both of his legs were broken, as well as his wrist, several teeth, and he also suffered a brain injury.
The driver in this case didn’t stop and put him in his vehicle, but instead kept on driving, leaving him for dead on the side of a road in Flagler Estates, until he was found by someone else who was driving by.
You may be asking yourself, who would run over a 14-year-old and then keep driving, like nothing happened ? Andrew Phillip Robinson, 46, was arrested for hitting Maslin, and according to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, he is being held on a felony charge of leaving the scene of a crash with serious bodily injury with a bond set at $100,000.
On Jan, 8, a 7th grader on her way to Fruit Cove Middle School was also hit by a car, and severely injured. The student’s name has not been released. The driver involved in that incident, thankfully, stayed on the scene and called 911.
So, how did we get here, and what do we do? For starters, there are absolutely no laws on the books in Florida protecting children at bus stops. None. Many find this troubling, when we seem to have laws governing everything else.
Florida does have a law prohibiting a woman from falling asleep under a hair dryer in a hair salon. We also have a law making it illegal to roll a barrel down a public street. And, according to Florida Statute 379.233, it is illegal to release more than 10 balloons at one time.
We have these laws, but none that protects children from being killed or injured as they try to get to school. There is a law requiring drivers to stop for actual school buses, but no protection for students before or after they get dropped off.
John Phillips is a Jacksonville-based lawyer, who has handled wrongful death cases for over 20 years, including representing parents who have lost children in vehicular crashes. He’s also a father of three school-aged children.
“Making matters worse than the statistics discussed in this article is Florida’s failure to criminalize dangerous driving in school zones,” Phillips said. “Drivers know they may get yelled at by a volunteer crossing guard, but it doesn’t slow them down. Without significant criminal penalties, you have systemic danger.”
Coupled with the fact that it is pitch black dark outside when many of these students are on their way to school, it is a recipe for disaster.
Jacksonville is notorious for pedestrian deaths: In just a two-year span, from 2021-2023, 147 pedestrians or bike riders were killed. You’ve seen the crazy driving in the mornings, as people are sleepy, distracted, annoyed and running late. You’ve heard stories from your co-workers when they get to the office, about the person that almost ran them off the road on their way to work.
During that same two-year span, over 500 people died in Jacksonville vehicle accidents. In 2024 in Jacksonville, we lost more lives to car crashes than by homicide — by far.
These numbers tell us that we are all in danger, but what do we do to protect those who can’t protect themselves? How can we feel safe sending our children to school, knowing that there is a chance they might not ever make it there alive?
Legislation protecting students at bus stops from reckless drivers is crucial to ensure their safety and prevent avoidable tragedies. Children on their way to school are extremely vulnerable to speeding vehicles and distracted drivers ignoring stop signals.
Phillips added other frightening facts. Florida is one of the only states in the country that does not require drivers to have insurance to pay for the injuries and deaths they cause. In most states, the state requires bodily injury coverage, but Florida has repeatedly voted down laws which require drivers and insurance companies to stand behind victims. Further, sovereign immunity puts hurdles and caps on damages when the danger is caused by the school, bus or failures to implement common sense security measures or lights.
“Justice is spelled one way but defined by victims differently. When they can’t get criminal justice or civil justice or law changes to make children safer, can we really say we stand by children?” Phillips said.
Enacting bus stop laws would be a sensible place to start. Measures like required lighting, harsher penalties for violations, surveillance cameras and clear signage, would all do much in the way of protecting our local students.
Sadly, it is too late for Martinez. Mooney, who’s only 14, will spend the rest of this year learning how to walk again and spend the rest of his life recovering from his injuries, as will the 7th grader that was hit in Fruit Cove.
We can’t go back and change what happened to them, but we still have the opportunity, and the obligation, to protect our kids and prevent this from happening again.
For this to happen, we all have a duty to raise public awareness about the issue of students safely getting to and from school, and to foster a culture of accountability, prioritizing the lives and safety of students on the First Coast.
Memorials, editorials, condolences and fundraisers won’t be enough. We have to actually do something about it, so that it stops.
Andrew Carswell is a writing professor at Florida State College at Jacksonville.
Follow FOLIO!