ST. AUGUSTINE BEACH, Fla. — Wendy Willis says she will never understand how someone could leave her son to die. Alone, on the side of the road.
“You know I think the hardest part is someone killing your child and there’s no accountability,” Willis said.
It was Oct. 10, 2016. Willis says around 5:30 p.m. she got a call from her son, 16-year-old Dalton Kuhn, asking her to pick him up from the skate park in St. Augustine Beach. But she was at work and unhappy to find out he would have to cross the 312 bridge to get back home.
“I told him to get back across that bridge,” she recalls.
After she got off work, she told Dalton she would meet him at the Carrabba’s near the 312 bridge in St. Augustine.
“He texted me at 7:20 p.m. and said “mom, where you at” so I am thinking he’s right there,” describes Wendy.
But Dalton never arrived. Minutes became hours and Willis says she thought he had gone to a friend’s house nearby, but by the next morning she started to feel frantic that she couldn’t reach him. That’s when a friend called to tell her they had seen a report about pedestrian struck on the news.
“I said ‘Heather was this a fatality’ and she said ‘yes ma’am’,” tells Wendy, “And then the air just comes out of you.”
Dalton was dead, left on the side of the road in the grass for 12 hours until he was spotted by a bicyclist the next morning. The victim of a hit and run.
“The hardest thing for me is that my son didn’t die instant. Would he probably have lived? The medical examiner said no, but I could have been there or they [the driver] could have been there and they could have held him. They could have held him so he wasn’t alone,” tells Wendy.
It is believed Dalton was struck by a silver Chevy or GMC truck, 2003 to 2007 model. The truck would have had a missing passenger side mirror and damage to the right side. Wendy says she knows people out there have information, the 312 bridge was the only bridge open in the area after Hurricane Matthew meaning there was more traffic using it and in a tight community, people talk.
“Someone they knew came home with a missing mirror, with damage to their truck and you saw it all over the news and we stood out there every day. You can’t tell me no one knows nothing,” says Wendy.
As she waits for answers, Wendy finds herself going through the old pictures, heartbroken that there will never be any new ones. Dalton was youngest of four children and a lover of sports. First baseball, then skateboarding. He was beloved by his sisters and nephew. Now across from those pictures, sits his ashes.
For Wendy, justice isn’t a long jail sentence. It’s making the person that struck Dalton take responsibility and become a voice for education.
“I want them, on the day they killed my son, to go to an AA class or a high school and if we could educate people and they could hear this story and hear why someone did what they did and their regrets, then maybe in the future one of these kids in the audience would not do the same thing,” describes Wendy.
She hopes they would learn to call for help instead of leaving. So no parent has to live with the knowledge their child died alone.
“I wasn’t there to tell him I love him and it’s going to be ok,” tells Wendy through tears, "That’s what not calling for help does to a family.”
If you know anything about the hit-and-run that lead to the death of Dalton Kuhn in St. Augustine contact the St. Augustine Police Department at 904-825-1070 or St. Johns County Crime Stoppers at 1-888-277-8477.