SANFORD, Fla. — The woman responsible for hitting and killing Javi Remonsanzol and his longtime fiancé on Interstate 4 in 2011 is set to be sentenced for leaving the scene of the crash.
Rita Carter, 25, will be in court for a hearing in December, records show.
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Remonsanzol’s family said that, after six years, it’s nice to see some justice in his case.
“It felt like it was being pushed away and under the table,” said Alex Remonsanzol, Javi’s son.
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Remonsanzol spoke with Channel 9’s Angela Jacob while showing her his father’s wrecked Harley-Davidson motorcycle that he was driving the night of the crash, which had been held in evidence for six years.
“This was like one of his favorite toys, masterpiece, everything,” he said. “I want to see it back how he had it.”
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The bent back wheel serves as a searing reminder of the horrific 2011 hit-and-run crash that killed his 34-year-old dad and his 32-year-old fiancé Allison Sellers.
“All I’ll say is my childhood kind of ended there,” said Remonsanzol.
The couple was just minutes away from their Sanford home, driving on I-4 near DeLand early one morning in October, when troopers said an SUV rear-ended them and kept going.
The couple died instantly, troopers said.
Five miles away, along State Road 44, DeLand police found Rita Carter, 19, with extensive front-end damage to her 2007 Ford Explorer.
Carter, the daughter of a Seminole County assistant state attorney, told officers and troopers she was on I-4 but hit a deer.
Troopers said her blood-alcohol level was calculated to be 0.09 at the time of the crash, but there was no arrest while investigators waited on lab results connecting trace evidence and vehicle forensics.
Sixteen months passed before Carter was charged with two counts of DUI manslaughter. She bonded out without serving a day in jail.
“You leave the scene of a death and you just go on about your day. I don't know how people can do that,” said Remonsanzol.
Three years later, the judge threw out the state’s evidence alleging Carter was drunk, saying she never consented to testing and the arrest took too long.
“There's really no time limit for this type of crash. Our job is to collect all the evidence so we have a successful prosecution and that's what we were doing,” said Sgt. Kim Montes with the Florida Highway Patrol.
Cox Media Group
