- April 16, 2024
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Deputies have arrested a Daytona man they say ran over a 24-year-old Flagler County resident on State Road 100, and then fled the scene while the man died on the pavement.
The crash happened Dec. 29, 2012. Sean Lynn Ryan, 24, was walking north along State Road 100 not long after midnight when a vehicle struck him and sped off.
A witness found Ryan and called 911, but Flagler County Rescue 51 was not able to save him, and he died at 2 a.m.
Deputies collected evidence from the scene of the crash, and they determined Ryan had been struck by a red Chevrolet Trailblazer. They notified the media.
About two weeks later — on Jan. 14, 2013 — a friend of the Ryan family noticed a red Chevy Trailblazer being loaded onto a rollback wrecker in Palm Coast.
He called the towing company and asked if he could take a look at the car, and the truck driver brought it back to the towing compound instead of its destination: a paint and body shop in Daytona Beach.
The friend contacted the Sheriff' Office, and deputies made contact with a Florida Highway Patrol corporal to check if the damage to the Trailblazer matched the measurements detectives had determined from the crash. It did.
Deputies verified the forensic match and traced the vehicle to a 48-year-old Daytona Beach man, John David Steele.
A checked with Steele's insurance company showed that he had reported a crash: He'd told Infinity Indemnity Insurance that he struck a deer at 12:20 a.m. Dec. 29, 2012.
But he'd said he crash happened on Old Kings Road, and when deputies questioned him, he initially agreed to talk, but then he refused and asked for a lawyer.
Deputies got a search warrant for the car and began testing it for DNA. Eventually, they found samples that matched Ryan's DNA — not on the exterior, but on the armrest and the interior of the passenger door.
Deputies arrested Steele on Dec. 27 for leaving the scene of a crash involving a death and took him to the Flagler County jail.
