A 22-year-old Maryland man has been charged in connection with a fatal hit-and-run that left a 14-year-old dead in July, according to local reports.
Tyler Mailloux faces 17 charges, including failing to stop at the scene of an accident resulting in death, more than nine months after the crash that killed Gavin Knupp, the Baltimore Banner reported.
“Something’s finally moving forward, I guess, just a stepping stone. It’s not the final end product,” Ray Knupp, Gavin’s father, told Fox News Digital.
Knupp was struck by a black Mercedes-Benz after he got out of his sister’s car to look at a taxidermy stag’s head that was on the side of Gray’s Corner Road in Berlin, Maryland.
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Knupp’s sister, Summer, only saw a dark car speeding away and rushed to her brother’s side, where she attempted CPR and called 911.
“At first, I didn’t want to go find his body because I did not want to see him like that. Something switched in me, and I was like, I (got to) go find him,” Summer Knupp told WBAL-TV on Thursday before any charges were announced. “If he’s (going to) die, I want to be there when he dies. I want to be his last memory.”
The only evidence of the vehicle was a driver’s side mirror that broke off near the crash site, the Banner reported.
A week after the crash, state police located and impounded a black Mercedes from a home in Ocean City, Maryland, according to reports. The home belonged to Ralph Deangelus, who lived there with his girlfriend Kearston Frey and her adult son, Mailloux.
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Despite seizing the Mercedes, no charges were immediately filed.
In the following weeks and months, the community banded together to get justice for Knupp and his family by posting signs reading “Justice for Gavin” or “Do it for Gavin” outside shops and restaurants in Ocean City.
After the charges were announced, Knupp family attorney Neil Dubovsky told WBAL-TV in a statement that the charges were “just a step” toward accountability.
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“Let there be no confusion – we will not rest until that process is completed, both through this criminal prosecution in addition to pursuing any and all available civil remedies,” the statement read, in part.
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