A family’s first Disney trip didn’t happen. A year later, their tragedy remains unsolved
For more than six months, Carlos Garcia Chacon and Nidia Vega planned their first trip to Disney World for their toddler.
They would go to the theme parks, meet Mickey and Minnie, enjoy family time.
Garcia left their native Colombia a few days before his wife and daughter to visit friends and family in Miami. He bought a bus ticket to meet them in Orlando on Oct. 1, 2018.
But Garcia never made it.
The 35-year-old man was walking in the 300 block of Northwest 109th Avenue, Sept. 30, 2018, when a car struck him. The driver, police say, never stopped. It’s been nearly a year, and still no answers.
On Thursday, his widow, fighting back tears, begged the community for help in finding the person who hit her husband of nine years and left him on the street.
“My life changed in one second,” Vega said in Spanish as her now 4-year-old daughter, Luciana, squirmed in the seat next her. “It’s not easy. I’m alone with my daughter.”
Her husband, a telecommunications worker in Colombia, had been in Miami a couple of days and was walking home sometime around 5 a.m. It was not clear where he was coming from, but police say he was heading to where he was staying.
Garcia was crossing the street when he was hit by a vehicle heading south. Police say the driver didn’t leave any clues behind, except skid marks.
It’s not known how long Garcia lay in the street before another driver spotted him and flagged down an officer.
Michael Tapanes, the lead investigator on the case for Miami-Dade police, said whoever hit him “left [Garcia] to die there, never bothered to stop and check on him.”
Garcia “was left there on the road dying, alone,” he said.
Meanwhile, Vega was waiting for her husband to arrive in Orlando.
“I had hopes that on October 1st he would be in Orlando at the airport like we had planned,” she said.
The next day, Oct. 2, family reported Garcia missing to the nearby Sweetwater Police Department. Miami-Dade police linked the missing man with the hit-and-run victim.
“It’s heartbreaking to have to tell her and her daughter that we haven’t been able to make a break in the case,” Tapanes said.
Over the last year, Vega, 35, has struggled without having her husband.
“I ask from my heart to the person who knows something, that has seen something, or knows who is responsible, or the person responsible, to please look at me, to look at my daughter and realize that we are alone,” she said. “I depended economically from my husband and since that time it’s been a very difficult situation here.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS (8477).
This story was originally published September 12, 2019 at 3:38 PM.