Man Who Took Photo of ‘Welcome to Florida’ Caused Fatal Car Accident, Police Say

A man allegedly caused a fatal car accident that killed his niece and three nephews after slowing to take a photo on I-95 of the “Welcome to Florida” sign.

Marvin Redondo-Funes is being charged with four counts of aggravated manslaughter of a child and numerous other criminal and civil charges.

The 25-year-old drove from New York to Florida with his girlfriend and their four children on July 1, 2023. Upon reaching the Georgia-Florida border at around 4 A.M., he slowed the car to just one or two miles per hour to get a photo of the “Welcome to Florida” sign.

According to the criminal complaint, a car coming up behind Redondo-Funes failed to notice that his vehicle had slowed to a near-stop and smashed into the back of Redondo-Funes’s car at full speed, where the four children were sitting.

Florida Highway Patrol Jacksonville tweeted that, “A picture is never worth a human life.”

According to a report in the New York Post, Redondo-Funes’s car was only designed to fit three people in the back but four children were squeezed into the backseat for the long car ride. Three of the kids were not wearing seatbelts.

Emergency services arrived and three of the children were pronounced dead at the scene while a fourth was rushed to hospital by paramedics. The fourth child died in hospital two days later; it is not clear if that was the child wearing a seatbelt.

Redondo-Funes, his girlfriend, and the other driver did not sustain any serious injuries. A GoFundMe page has been set up by family members to cover funeral costs.

Redondo-Funes was arrested back in New York and extradited to Florida on November 2. The New York Post reports that he is on a $270,016 bond in Nassau County Jail and is expected to make his first court appearance on December 6.

Image credits: Public Domain/Flickr.