Categories: Merritt Island

Skateboarder Dies After Being Towed By Car

MERRITT ISLAND, Florida — The Florida Highway Patrol is reporting that a skateboarder has died as a result of injuries she sustained from an accident that occurred while being towed behind a vehicle in Merritt Island, Florida.


According to FHP, 17-year-old Haley Hodge of Satellite Beach, Florida was riding on a skateboard that was being towed with a rope from a 2002 Toyota Celica driven by 19-year-old Zachary Byrnes of Rockledge, Florida.


While the Celica was traveling northbound on South Tropical Trail on Merritt Island, Hodge fell off the skateboard and sustained critical injuries.  Hodge was initially transported to Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, Florida but later transferred to Arnold Palmer Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Florida where she died on Wednesday, October 21, 2014.

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  • Two idiots with expected results. I don't have sympathy for people who purposely do things that they know can have this kind of result.

  • Poor Zachary - I know I did things just as fun and just as dangerous as skating behind a car, but as kids we're still immortal, as it should be! The brain isn't fully wired yet and we don't have life experience yet. I have few regrets. I just hope Zachary has the support he's going to need in the future ahead of him.

  • Amazing---sorry but I never put someone's life in danger like that. And by the way he's 19 yrs. old Hope they file criminal charges against him for being negligent in her death along with multiple driving violations.

  • This is what I've been saying saying about the D.U.I. scam for years. People get killed doing all kinds of things. But you people have been conditioned to believe that if this kid had been drunk, it somehow would have been worse or more idiotic or negligent on the kids part. The bottom line is, the girl is dead because he was doing something stupid.. If she'd been a passenger in the car and he'd been drunk, you idiots would be calling for his head. This D.U.I. scam has brainwashed an entire country

  • Two idiots with expected results. I don't have sympathy for people who purposely do things that they know can have this kind of result.

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