Dana Thomas Byrd a 30-year-old from St. Petersburg, Florida crashed his Ford F-150 pickup truck into Dhimitri Andoni, 22, of Clearwater on Thursday night, killing him. Andoni reportedly stopped to help a driver who had lost control of his car and spun out into the median on Interstate 275, according to The Tampa Bay Times. Byrd fled the scene with Andoni’s car and was arrested the following night.
Upon crashing into Andoni, Byrd stopped his truck and realized that he killed a man, troopers said. He then took Andoni’s Hyundai and drove it to an office building at 2500 25th Avenue N. in St. Petersburg, abandoning the Hyundai there while having left his F-150 behind at the site of the accident.
Andoni’s father used GPS to track his son’s car to the office building and alerted police that his son was missing. A road ranger of the Florida Department of Transportation found Byrd’s truck and Andoni’s body around 12.30 p.m. on Friday. Byrd was arrested at his home that night on charges of leaving the scene of an accident involving a death, and grand theft auto.
While it’s unclear why Byrd drove Andoni’s car to that particular office building, or decided to switch vehicles in the first place, Byrd has a checkered past in Pinellas County, comprised of 16 arrests since 2005 ranging from DUIs, retail theft, child neglect, violation of probation, and domestic battery.
As it stands, investigators are urging the driver whom Andoni helped on Thursday night to contact the Highway Patrol at (813) 558-1800 in order to garner more information.