Hit-and-Run on North 25th Street in Fort Pierce: Why Crashes Like These Present Unique Problems

Gregg Hollander | August 6, 2026 | Accident News

Two children were hurt in Fort Pierce this week when a car turning onto North 25th Street struck them while they were crossing in a marked crosswalk. The driver stopped, checked on them, and then left anyway. 

I want to start by saying what this case isn’t about, because it’s actually the easier half of most of what I write about. The children were in a marked crosswalk. Florida law gives pedestrians the right of way there without much room for argument. The hard part of this case has nothing to do with who had the right of way. It’s that nobody officially knows who the driver is yet.

Stopping Isn’t the Same as Complying

There’s a detail here worth being precise about, because it’s easy to assume a driver who stops and checks on someone has basically done the right thing, just imperfectly. Florida law actually breaks a driver’s post-crash duty into two separate pieces: giving the injured party your name, address, and vehicle registration, and rendering reasonable aid. At this point, we have no idea if “checking on” the children satisfied either of those pieces (in my opinion, probably not). That distinction matters here specifically because it’s the entire reason this family is dealing with a hit-and-run case rather than an ordinary one: not because fault is unclear, but because there’s no identified person to hold accountable for it yet.

Recovering From a Driver Nobody’s Identified Yet

This is where Florida law actually gives families a real path forward, and it’s worth understanding how it works. When the at-fault driver in a crash can’t be identified, Florida treats that driver as an uninsured motorist for insurance purposes, which means a family can pursue their own uninsured motorist coverage as a stand-in for the driver who fled, without ever needing to know who they actually are. 

There’s a requirement that matters here: Florida generally requires actual physical contact between the vehicle and the pedestrians to support this kind of claim when the driver was never identified. That requirement is easily met here. The car struck the children directly, and the damage described on the vehicle itself, driver’s side impact, is exactly the kind of physical evidence that satisfies it. A family in this position can also file suit against the driver as an unnamed defendant to preserve the claim before any filing deadline runs out, and simply substitute in their real name later if they’re ever identified.

The Description on the Street Doesn’t Disappear if the Case Moves Forward Legally

None of this means everyone stops looking for the actual driver. A detailed description, a gold Mercedes-Benz with a tan interior, no tint, and fresh damage to the driver’s side, is a real, specific lead, and body shops, witnesses, or even the driver himself eventually getting pulled over for something unrelated can turn this from an unidentified-driver case into an ordinary one overnight.