occurred last year on Oct. 31<\/a> on Southeast Crosstown Parkway and Southeast Sandia Drive, police said.<\/p>\nAccording to a probable cause affidavit, Victor Santiago was riding a motorized scooter in a marked crosswalk at around 5:45 a.m. when he was struck and killed by a black Mercedes-Benz driven by Swantic.<\/p>\n
Data from the car’s electronic data recorder (EDR) showed that Swantic was actively accelerating in the moments before the deadly collision. The car went from 59 mph at 5 seconds before impact at 72 mph in a posted 45 mph zone, the affidavit said. The data also showed that the gas pedal was pressed as high as 98% during this period. <\/p>\n
Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s blood toxicology results received on Jan. 30 showed the following substances in Swantic’s blood at the time of the crash:<\/p>\n
MethadoneAlprazolam Diazepam Nordiazepam <\/p>\n
A certified drug recognition evaluator concluded Swantic was under the influence of a combination of “a CNS stimulant and a narcotic analgesic” and was not safe to drive, the affidavit said.<\/p>\n
During a court-authorized search of Swantic’s car on Nov. 3, 2025, investigators said they found a locked box in the trunk containing multiple prescription-strength medications, including 13 doses of methadone (one empty), bottles of clonazepam, omeprazole, propranolol hydrochloride, alprazolam, and clonidine HCL. A case of Narcan was also found in the trunk.<\/p>\n
Based on the evidence collected, police determined that Swantic “intentionally and willfully” drove a car in a “reckless manner” that resulted in the death of Santiago.<\/p>\n
Swantic faces numerous charges, including vehicular manslaughter and DUI manslaughter.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Port St. Lucie Police Department said it has made an arrest in a fatal crash after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-173287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}