{"id":18970,"date":"2013-01-07T16:53:49","date_gmt":"2013-01-07T21:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18970"},"modified":"2013-01-07T16:53:49","modified_gmt":"2013-01-07T21:53:49","slug":"teenagers-life-comes-to-tragic-end-in-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=18970","title":{"rendered":"Teenager\u2019s Life Comes To Tragic End In Accident"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tampa Police reported that at 4:40 a. m. Sunday, 15-year-old <strong>Roderick Williams<\/strong> was driving a vehicle east across the Laurel Street Bridge. At some point, <strong>Williams<\/strong> lost control of the vehicle, struck a guardrail, and plunged into the river, sinking in 20-feet of water.<\/p>\n<p>The section of Laurel Street approaching the bridge heading east has a lot of sharp curves, and can be difficult to navigate if you aren\u2019t familiar with the roadway. It also has a dark section as the last of the curves turns towards the bridge.<\/p>\n<p>Tampa Fire Rescue arrived and were able to get <strong>Williams <\/strong>out of the vehicle, but pronounced him dead at the scene. A second person who witnessed the accident was also pulled from the water after trying to rescue <strong>Williams<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ericka Williams<\/strong>, <strong>Roderick\u2019s<\/strong> mother, said her son was going through a series of emotional problems, and she hadn\u2019t seen him since December 28<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI called police to report him missing. While he was gone, he contacted his sister and grandmother, but the rest of us hadn\u2019t heard a thing. He didn\u2019t contact anyone to say Happy New Year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m no different than any other parent when it comes to their children. I was always worried about <strong>Roderick<\/strong>, and scared something would happen to him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms. Williams<\/strong> said <strong>Roderick <\/strong>had been in and out of several juvenile offender programs,<strong> <\/strong>didn\u2019t want to attend school, and didn\u2019t want to be in a detention facility.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was put into an aftercare program, but since they had a curfew, he ran away from that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf there was one thing <strong>Roderick<\/strong> really enjoyed, it was playing for the youth football team at Fair Oaks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms. Williams<\/strong> said one of her biggest concerns about her son was the fact he was so easily influenced, and felt he needed to prove something to people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was always a very intelligent young man, and really loved science. I often thought about moving into a different community, but as a single parent, that wasn\u2019t possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ms. Williams<\/strong> said <strong>Roderick<\/strong> was driving his sister\u2019s car without her permission.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not the way we planned on celebrating the New Year. We all hoped that things would get better for him this year, and we could be a family again. It was troubling he couldn\u2019t be with us to bring in the New Year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Roderick<\/strong> has a twin brother, <strong>Broderick<\/strong>, and four other siblings.<\/p>\n<p>The family is asking for help in making funeral arrangements for <strong>Roderick<\/strong>, and ask if anyone can help, please call (813)506-0554.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tampa Police reported that at 4:40 a. m. Sunday, 15-year-old Roderick Williams was driving a vehicle east across the Laurel Street Bridge. At some point, Williams lost control of the vehicle, struck a guardrail, and plunged into the river, sinking in 20-feet of water. The section of Laurel Street approaching the bridge heading east has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}