Third Death in a Week: Man Killed by Semi After Fleeing ICE in Florida

A man died Tuesday morning on State Road 16, hit by a tractor-trailer as he ran from federal immigration agents. He was 28. Authorities have not released his name.

His death is the third involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement in seven days.

Roughly nine hours later, the Trump administration ordered ICE to suspend most vehicle stops nationwide. However, that order would not have saved the individual in question, for two reasons that reveal how narrow the pause actually is.

Specifically, the suspension announced Tuesday covers Enforcement and Removal Operations, the ICE division handling civil immigration arrests, while leaving Homeland Security Investigations untouched.

The Florida Highway Patrol says the St. Augustine encounter involved both divisions: Enforcement and Removal Operations and Homeland Security Investigations. In its statement, the agency described “an encounter between HSI and ICE agents” in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store.

There is a second gap in the suspension. While the pause restricts stopping vehicles, nothing about Tuesday morning was a vehicle stop. Instead, agents approached four people at a Wawa, and the four ran on foot. The man who died was on foot when the truck hit him.

Therefore, a policy written around cars does not reach a man running across a highway.

FHP Sgt. Dylan Bryan told CNN that agents encountered the four occupants of a vehicle at the Wawa on State Road 16 early Tuesday. All four fled.

One crossed the highway and “into the path of the tractor-trailer,” Bryan said. The truck struck him in the right lane. The driver stopped and tried to help. First responders pronounced the man dead at the scene. FHP’s incident map logged the crash at 6:42 a.m.

State troopers were not part of the original operation involving ICE and HSI agents. They are now investigating the death. Deputies from the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office directed traffic around the scene.

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security has commented. First Coast News was told a DHS statement was coming shortly. Nexstar’s WFLA received no response. CNN’s request went unanswered.

The man’s name has not been released. His nationality and immigration status are also unknown — a point CTN emphasizes because early coverage has been quick to assume he was undocumented. The Associated Press has confirmed only that the person who died was a man.

Why agents initially approached the vehicle remains unclear. No warrant has been described, and no target has been named by authorities. Whether the four people were specifically sought, questioned, or were simply present has not been explained.

The three other occupants have not been publicly accounted for.

The Florida death now closes a week that has forced the enforcement campaign into public question.

On July 7 in Houston, ICE officers stopped a white van they believed carried a man they were hunting. Inside was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, a Mexican national driving to work. An officer shot him. Federal officials have since acknowledged it was a mistaken identity. His family says he had no criminal record, had lived in the United States for more than thirty years, and was close to receiving a work permit.

On Monday in Biddeford, Maine, an officer shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national, after agents tried to stop his car. He was not the man they were looking for, either. He left a wife and a three-year-old daughter. The officers wore no body cameras.

By Tuesday morning, a man was dead on a Florida highway. By Tuesday afternoon, Washington had paused the tactic.

Three men are dead in a week. Two were confirmed to be the wrong men. The third has not been identified at all.

For families of Haitian and Caribbean descent in New England and Florida, the risk presented does not require a warrant with an individual’s name. In Houston, agents stopped a similar van. In Maine, a person was stopped outside an apartment near an address under observation. In St. Augustine, the circumstances remain unclear.

The vehicle stops are paused. The parking lots are not.

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Editorial Disclaimer:
This article was originally written in English. Other language versions are produced using AI translation, and errors are possible — the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio. Readers and listeners should rely on the English text where any discrepancy arises.