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Updated Jan. 16
Conrad Hernandez cracked a joke, something about giving his extra pounds to a teeny tiny family member.
He was talking to his mother on the phone on his way home to Parrish from work, stuck in rush-hour traffic as he crawled south over the Howard Frankland Bridge. Hernandez was always cracking jokes, turning waits at the airport or nights watching âJeopardy!â into comedy routines, family and friends said.
But on that Dec. 17 day, shortly after 6 p.m., there were no more jokes.
Suddenly, Rosa Hernandez couldnât hear her son over the phone. Instead, she heard some kind of âbig noise,â she said, hard to describe even a month later.
ST. PETERSBURG â A 42-year-old St. Petersburg man was arrested on a charge of DUI manslaughter in connection with a five-vehicle crash Dec. 17 that left one man dead.
Bryant Aubrey Haney was booked into the Pinellas County Jail. He was also charged with driving with a suspended or revoked license causing death. Bail was set at $15,000.
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, two sedan-type vehicles were on southbound I-175 near the Gandy Boulevard exit, stopped in traffic in the center lane about 6:12 p.m. Two other vehicles, also sedans, were in the southbound outside lane also stopped in traffic.
Troopers said a sport utility vehicle driven southbound by Haney failed to stop and crashed into the back of one of the stopped vehicles, causing a chain reaction crash. The driver of one of the idled vehicles, a 37-year-old man from Parrish, was transported to a local hospital where he later died.