Loved ones, lawmakers and collaborators overseas are mourning the loss of a Bahamian artist identified as the victim of a deadly crash after the sheriff’s office said a driver fled a traffic stop in Miami-Dade.
It happened in the Brownsville neighborhood just before 7:45 p.m. Wednesday at the intersection of Northwest 51st Terrace and Northwest 33rd Avenue.
A nearby home’s surveillance video shows a dark vehicle running a stop sign before slamming into another car, causing it to flip over and crash into an unmarked Miami-Dade Sheriff’s deputy.
According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, the driver that ran the stop sign, 21-year-old Luis Manuel Perez, had fled a traffic stop just moments before.
The deputy was treated at the scene, and the innocent driver was taken to the hospital, where he later died.
He was identified as 55-year-old Stefan Davis, a prolific Bahamian artist known for his airbrushing, among other techniques.
“His legacy hit so many different generations,” his longtime friend Levin Wilson said. “You know, you can be 30 years old, you can be 60 years old, and you’ve could’ve come in contact with Stefan, and you would’ve had something positive to say about him.”
Tributes have poured in on social media for Davis, including from Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis, who wrote that the artist’s “passing is a tremendous loss for our country and our creative community.”
Member of Parliament for the Free Town Constituency Lincoln Deal remembered that Davis “wasn’t simply painting. He was an artist with a gift that was unmistakably his own.”
Davis is survived by his mother, two children, and a partner whom he was soon to marry.
At the scene of the crash, a Bahamian flag stands by flowers and a teddy bear at a make shift memorial.
“Rest peacefully, Stefan,” Brave Davis said in a post on Facebook. “You gave The Bahamas something beautiful, and we will always remember you.”