Family of crash victims calls for harsher penalties against unlicensed drivers

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — A woman is calling for change after an unlicensed driver hit and killed her daughter and mother.

The man who troopers said hit and killed 3-year-old Fallon Painter and her grandmother in Lake County last weekend didn’t survive the crash either, but troopers said he was driving without a license.

State troopers call it a significant problem, saying too many people without licenses are behind the wheel.

With thousands of suspended licenses around the state, the Florida Highway Patrol said there’s a huge correlation between drivers with suspended licenses and crashes.

The current law in Florida gives licensed drivers who cause a fatal crash the same consequences as those driving without one.

“When we go back to Tallahassee, that’s something that definitely we can go and start looking at and addressing,” said state Rep. Bob Cortes (D-District 30).

Cortes said some of his democratic counterparts fear increasing penalties hurts more of the middle or poor class.

"In our case, we want to make sure if we do increase penalties, if it's going to increase cost into our system, we don't want to put somebody in jail when our jails are already overcrowded if there's another way of doing it,” he said.

The Painter family hopes the state will do something soon, before it happens to someone else’s family.

The family said they’re now on a mission to keep unlicensed drivers off the streets.

Cox Media Group