Mustang suspected as being in a hit-and-run was found. Here’s what cops need to find now
Over the weekend, Fort Lauderdale police released a photo of a white Ford Mustang, with license plate visible, they believed had struck Lynn Hessley in a July 3 hit-and-run. On Monday, they found that car.
It was the wrong Mustang. The 2006 car was almost a decade older and two major model redesigns from the Mustang they now suspect put Hessley on life support.
Now, they say, evidence left at the scene and eyewitness accounts have them looking for a white 2015-2017 Mustang. They’re also looking for the driver of another car that surveillance video shows stopping right behind the incident.
Hessley, once known as a Rochester, NY, radio host under the name “Jesse Jordan,” was hit around 10:40 p.m. on July 3 on State Road A1A near the Seville Street intersection. She suffered fractures to her skull, pelvis and legs.
“These are injuries that oftentimes, people do not survive,” Broward Health trauma surgeon Jose Lozada, who worked on Hessley, told reporters Monday.
Police say they knew they were looking for a white Mustang that witnesses said had multiple rear decals. The original reward flier placed the year between 2007 and 2014 and showed a 2010-2014 Mustang.
A license tag reader showed a 2006 white Mustang “frequented the area” and was there around the time Hessley got hit. And, it had rear bumper stickers. That’s the Mustang police put on fliers handed out to citizens and the media Saturday.
When they found that Mustang Monday morning, police said, “The owner of the vehicle was overwhelmingly cooperative with our investigation, and ultimately it was determined this was not the vehicle involved in this hit and run.”
The evidence (car parts) didn’t match a 2006 Mustang. It did match a 2015-2017 Mustang.
For Mustang geeks, Ford’s complete retro-1966-68 redesign of the Mustang in 2005 held with minor changes through the 2009 models. In 2010, Ford created a different look by slimming the front grille and the taillights and raising the angle of the rear section. For the iconic model’s 50th anniversary, 2015, Ford’s significant redesign seemed to blow a kiss at the reviled 1975 Mustang II Cobra.
Anyone who knows something about this incident can reach Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-8477 or via the website; or Fort Lauderdale police traffic homicide investigator Andrea Johnson at 954-828-5825.
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