ORLANDO, Fla. _ Troopers arrested a 26-year-old Orlando man on Tuesday after an exhaustive investigation into a 2015 crash on Florida's Turnpike that killed a Georgia family.
Florida Highway Patrol troopers spent months reconstructing the moments leading up to the crash, officials said.
James Geoffrey Dameron, who was found wearing an ankle monitor wrapped in copper and tin foil stemming from a previous drug-related arrest, was taken into custody by FHP troopers on the turnpike in Palm Beach County at about 4:50 p.m, according to FHP spokeswoman Sgt. Kim Montes.
Montes said authorities received a tip Monday on Dameron's whereabouts. On Tuesday, three troopers stationed themselves on the side of the turnpike, searching for a white Mercedes SUV, hoping to identify the suspect.
Dameron was driving the third white Mercedes SUV that troopers intercepted. His half-brother, Joseph Kieran, 24, was a passenger, FHP officials said. Dameron attempted to flee from authorities by taking a turnpike exit, but he ran into traffic and was pulled over and taken into custody, Montes said.
"When all these agencies come together, this is the cool part of being a cop," Montes said. "When all these law-enforcement agencies come together to catch the bad guy."
Montes said Seminole County Sheriff's Office and the FHP had been actively looking for Dameron since the collision that ended the lives of a young couple from Georgia and their baby daughter, on their way to Walt Disney World for the girl's first birthday.
Dameron, who police say was driving on a suspended license in 2015, rear-ended Thomas Garza, his companion Lillian Luna and their daughter Brianna, causing both cars to flip, according to investigators.
Garza, 23, and Luna, 20, died after their vehicle caught fire. Brianna was ejected from the vehicle and taken to the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, where she was later pronounced dead.
At the time, Montes said investigators didn't have enough evidence to arrest Dameron at the scene because it was almost completely compromised in the crash.
Authorities used video footage from the toll booths that Dameron drove through on the morning of the wreck as evidence that Dameron had been speeding before rear-ending the young family's 2001 Nissan Maxima.
On December of last year, Montes said, the agencies handed the traffic homicide investigation over to Lake County's state attorney's office, which concluded Dameron acted with negligence.
On Tuesday, Dameron was arrested on three counts of vehicular homicide and driving with a suspended license, involved in a death, a warrant for drug-related charges in Seminole County, and a new charge for fleeing and alluding authorities.
Kieran also was arrested at the scene after troopers found drugs in the car. They were both booked into the Palm Beach County jail, Montes said.
Dameron said at the time that he was able to crawl out the back of his car. He was taken to South Lake Hospital in Clermont after suffering minor injuries.
The case is now part of a criminal investigation, Montes said.
