LAKELAND, Fla. — Deanna Mekita takes West Pipkin Road every morning for work. But what she saw on her route Tuesday morning weighed heavy on her mind throughout the day.
"I saw the traffic was there. As I got a little closer, I could see a young lady in a tank top doing CPR. You never want to see things like that. It's terrible," Mekita recounted.
Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor said just before 7 a.m., a McKeel Academy school bus carrying eight elementary school students hit and killed a 15-year-old.
"It appears that the young man was on a bicycle riding to school. He attended the Central Florida Aerospace Academy," said Chief Taylor. "When he tried to cross the roadway, he was heading from south to north, crossing the roadway. It looks like he crossed out in front of the path of the school bus. It doesn't appear that the school bus was speeding."
Chief Taylor said the 71-year-old bus driver was extremely upset.
"It's a multiple-lane highway that he was trying to cross. He was in the turning lane and appeared and tried to move from a turning lane into the inside lane where the school bus was traveling on the inside lane," he added.
The crash happened in a neighborhood full of new housing developments. Mekita moved into one of the homes just a year ago. Since then, she's felt concerns about safety that many of her neighbors mirror.
"You've got people speeding and coming and making U-turns using our development," she said. "It was just a matter of time that this was going to happen. It's it's emotional."
On West Pipkin Road, orange traffic barrels are as common as the cars zipping by them.
For years, crews have worked on construction to widen the lanes. Since Mekita moved in a year ago, she's waited to see safety changes.
"There's no crossing guards, that traffic lights not there. It was dark. Because now the sun's coming up until seven. And this family has to go without their son. So it's just it's scary," she added.
She's not the only one concerned.
"The neighborhood itself has approached city council several times about a light because there's been very devastating car accidents at that intersection," said Amanda Vath.
The area is growing and growing fast.
"It's certainly an area that's being developed. I mean, at one point, those were all cow pastures. And so, but now there's homes there, and people are moving in, and families are moving in, and obviously families with children are moving in, and the kids are going to school, and they're being transported to school, and they're driving hand and walk into school," said Chief Taylor.
While the construction to add more lanes to West Pipkin is a county project, Polk County Division Director of Roads and Drainage Jay Jarvis said traffic lights and street lighting fall on the developers of Riverstone, the subdivision directly across the street from where Crabtree was killed.
"Part of their developers' agreement or approval by the city was that a traffic signal will be installed at that intersection of Medulla and West Pipkin once they reached a certain threshold with regards to the number of homes that have been built," he said.
The reinforcements for safety measures like a traffic light are up, but the most important part is missing: the light itself. The culprit? Supply chain issues according to the county.
"One of the items that has been an ongoing issue relative to signalization is the electronic equipment that is required to do those signals, the cabinets and those types of things are currently experiencing anywhere from, we've been told a year to 18 months delay in getting those delivered," he added.
The county even weighed adding a temporary signal but ran into the same issues.
In September, they installed reflective delineators. Those separate lanes keep traffic confined in hopes of easing traffic flow.
To this community, Crabtree's death is proof that more needs to be done.
"The county will be having discussions about any interim improvements we might be able to do to try to address safety concerns in the meantime until such point as the signal can be completed and done," Jarvis added.
