Wayne and Sheree Kettlety freshen the flowers at the roadside cross that marks the spot where their son, Danial, died Nov. 10, 1997. Sheree says the cross was put there by Danial's Winn-Dixie co-workers the day of his death. "It's here so that every time the police drive by, they're reminded that they haven't finished their job," Wayne says. No one has been charged in the hit-and-run accident. ANDY JONES/Tribune photo.

On a December night in 1997, Karen Gwen Crosson veered outside the driving lanes of U.S. 92, east of Tampa. Her Cutlass hit a bicycle.

John Brennan, 38, rode the bike because he'd lost his driver's license.

His body tumbled past Crosson. His head hit her windshield.

She jerked the wheel and kept going.

``I thought I hit a sign,'' she says.

They were each familiar with hit-and-run crashes. In 1987, Brennan killed a man and fled. In 1991, Crosson lost her son to a driver who didn't stop.

Brennan died in a ditch that night, undetected except by ants.

Twice convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol, twice penalized for refusing blood alcohol tests, Crosson says she had ``a couple drinks'' but wasn't drunk when she hit Brennan.

No one can prove otherwise: Forty-three hours passed before a telephone tip led Hillsborough County Sheriff's deputies to Crosson's mobile home. They charged her with leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

Last May, Judge Diana Allen gave her two years probation.

By then, Crosson had learned her lesson. Awaiting sentencing, she fled another car crash, according to a sheriff's report. No one was hurt. The deputy alleged Crosson had been drinking but didn't charge her with DUI.

Crosson says she has since given up alcohol.

She gets her license back in May.

INDIFFERENCE DOUBLED in the year of John Brennan's death.

Drunk, stunned or unaware, drivers in the five-county Tampa Bay area turned their backs on 52 dying men, women and children - twice as many as in 1996 - and left 389 others badly injured.

It's the sordid side of America's crackdown on drunk driving: People wreck lives then run away, hoping to duck a DUI charge or worse.

Nationally, police chiefs say 4 in 5 drivers who leave serious accidents have something to hide: drunk driving, bad licenses, outstanding warrants or no insurance.

``The most common excuse I hear is, `I panicked. I went into a state of shock and I panicked,' '' says Sgt. Tom Przybylowicz of the Florida Highway Patrol in Bradenton. ``My gut tells me they were drunk or have a suspended license.''

Crash details for 1998 aren't yet available. But total traffic deaths climbed, and investigators see no change of heart among drivers.

``They're saying, `If I'm drinking and I get caught at the scene drunk and I've killed somebody, I'm facing tremendous years,'' says FHP Cpl. Darren Slater. `` `If I leave and they find my vehicle and I'm sober, what's the most I'm going to get?' ''

Both crimes, DUI manslaughter and leaving a scene with death, are second-degree felonies.

But under state sentencing guidelines, a DUI manslaughter conviction means an automatic prison sentence, up to 15 years.

Drivers who flee don't go to prison without additional convictions or felony records.

Bills pending in the Florida Legislature would toughen DUI laws - but not laws against leaving the scene - further widening the penalty gap.

``You basically get rewarded for running away,'' says one victim's mother, Elaine Rodrigues de Miranda of St. Petersburg.

	A sign in front of a roadside cross offers a reward for information in the hit-and-run death of Danial Kettlety, on Ridge Road in New Port Richey. ANDY JONES/Tribune photo.

OF 30 DRIVERS apprehended in the 1997 crashes, one wasn't charged, five await trial and one skipped bail. Nine did no worse than probation or community service; one got house arrest; three, a year in county jail; two, weekends in jail; and two, work release.

Six went to state prison, but only because detectives proved additional charges of DUI manslaughter, third-degree murder, negligent manslaughter or vehicular homicide.

Pedro Senteno Jr. got 34 1/2 years.

Drunk, he fled but was caught, after crashing head-on into a car in Manatee County on Dec. 6, 1997, killing Jennifer Wilson McCall and her toddler, Michael.

``He didn't think of anybody but himself,'' says Jennifer's sister, Jelane Broxson of Parrish.

``He was concerned about himself and he left, and I think it's a sorry thing to do.''

Nobody found the driver who killed New Port Richey triathlete Danial Kettlety, 19. Or the car that pushed a Bradenton couple, William Mattox and Krista Smith, into a head-on crash. Or the vehicle that dragged MaryAnn Cornish, a grandmother, 830 feet through Sulphur Springs.

Valerie Schadow's parents waited months before car parts led to Ira B. Green, who ran over the 13-year-old Seminole girl as she crossed Starkey Road with playmates.

A judge put Green on five years probation.

``We have pretty good intelligence he'd been drinking,'' says prosecutor Mary Handsel in Pinellas County.

``But there's no way I can prove it because of the length of time between the accident and when he was caught.''

Likewise, by the time Jeffrey Blezinski and Shane Luepkes surrendered - three days after Blezinski hit 80-year-old Zannie Black, four days after Luepkes hit two drunk pedestrians - neither man's blood could be tested for alcohol.

Blezinski, who admitted to drinking, was sentenced to a year in jail.

Luepkes, who said he drank nothing, got a year of weekends in jail. He wasn't charged with driving under the influence, but Pasco Circuit Judge Joseph Donahey Jr. barred him from alcohol for 15 years.

Luepkes had a prior DUI conviction.

``Why didn't you stop?'' victim Maryann Rose Fawcett's mother, Mary Juscott, remembers asking Luepkes in court.

``Why couldn't you hold her, comfort her, even in her last moments?''

THE DEAD, ages 4 to 82, included a hair stylist, an honor student, a cancer patient, a crack addict, an electrician, an insurance salesman, a Bosnian immigrant, Florida natives, northern visitors, a toddler and a retired seamstress - 33 pedestrians, 16 motorists and three bicyclists.

Fleeing drivers included a homemaker, an exotic dancer, an Al Jolson impersonator, a painter, a cruise ship manager, a machinist, a convenience store clerk and a landscape worker.

Some surrendered. Others had to be tracked down.

Some felt awful. Others showed little remorse.

At least nine drove without valid licenses.

Eight, arrested within hours, had illegal blood alcohol concentrations.

One third of the dead, 17 pedestrians, were drunk. Florida law assumes drivers are impaired if their blood alcohol concentration reaches .08. Ten pedestrians died with levels at least three times that - including Dorothy Jean Kinney, .39, Mark Hubert Henning, .25, and Jules Lemoine, .28.

``I say my rosary when I start thinking of her,'' says Kinney's mother, Dorothy Hegarty of South Boston, Mass.

``I wanted to get him into AA and see if I couldn't help him,'' says Henning's father, Frank, of Brandon.

They crossed streets and stumbled along roadways, blindly trusting others to keep them alive.

Cars flew by them with dirty windshields and bad headlights, occupants talking on cell phones.

Happy hour drivers followed the curbs home.

Trooper Slater recalls a recent crash in which two drunks slammed into each other. One, a bicyclist, tested .28; the other, a motorist, tested .17.

``The driver, he probably thought he was fine - `I had a couple drinks, a couple double shots, but I don't feel impaired.'

``The guy on the bike, he could very well have gotten home,'' Slater says.

``But when you have two impaired drivers coming at each other, it's a formula for disaster.''

On Feb. 9, 1997, the equation varied only slightly.

Joseph J. Catalani, a family man with a clean record, drove down U.S. 41 toward Riverview, stereo blasting in a friend's Ford Explorer.

They came from Ybor City and the Ice Palace. They'd both been drinking, but his friend felt more intoxicated. So Catalani, who told detectives he drank three beers, drove.

It was a festive evening until David Ben Hicks stepped in the road, his blood alcohol level at .28.

``You have to be responsible,'' Catalani says. ``If you're a pedestrian, you have to be responsible, too.

``If you stand in front of a train, you're going to die.''

Two hours after the crash, Catalani's blood tested .05.

Investigators said it ranged from .07 to .11 at crash time.

Catalani pleaded no contest to leaving the scene. He was sentenced to eight weekends in jail.

He offers multiple reasons for driving away: He didn't know he hit a human. He thought it was an animal, or that someone threw something. He felt vulnerable on the dark highway.

CROSSON GUESSED she hit a road sign.

Luepkes said he didn't know what he hit.

Michael Hutchinson figured it was a deer, not Gulf War veteran Joanne Zakusylo.

``I've never heard of deer in that area,'' her daughter says.

Some people deny being behind the wheel.

They claim memory loss.

They report cars stolen after crashes.

Police hear so many excuses, it's tough to sort out the honest ones.

``Nobody has come up to me and said, `I was absolutely hammered,' '' Sgt. Przybylowicz says.

Investigators know it's hard to overlook a collision with a human. The impact bends metal and cracks windshields. Hicks rode Catalani's hood for 123 feet before the driver hit the brakes, an investigator reported.

``Hitting a pedestrian that weighs at least 120 pounds is going to put a heck of a ding in your car,'' says Cpl. George Mosher of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

``Wouldn't you suggest that a reasonable person would realize they hit something considerable? Wouldn't a reasonable person's curiosity cause them to stop and go back and look?''

Without a stopped car and hazard lights to slow traffic, victims only get hit again.

And again.

That's what sticks in the throats of those who bury the dead.

The disrespect.

``You just don't leave them there to die like some carcass on the side of the road,'' says Rhea Grant, mother to victim Michael Joseph Grant, 17.

Passenger Zdravko Ignjatic was thrown from a van in a Pinellas crash. Both drivers stopped, but as Ignjatic lay on the pavement, a third vehicle crushed his head. That driver didn't stop.

If it sounds as if people die because drivers leave crash scenes, the evidence is elusive.

Usually, another motorist calls 911.

Or the injuries weren't survivable.

Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Don Young wonders about Kettlety, the triathlete. He lost a lot of blood before someone stopped. But he also had a serious brain stem injury.

``Usually it's a car vs. pedestrian,'' says Tampa Police Detective Mike Willingham, ``and they're so traumatic.

``The human body is so fragile compared to speeding metal at 45 miles an hour.''

BY ABANDONING the dying, drivers assault the living.

Grief grows in the void of compassion.

The Matos family lives with two deaths plus this knowledge: To escape blame, a trucker pivoted his rust-colored tractor-trailer in a 90-degree turn over Hector Matos Cordova's crushed van, as Hector and his niece Audrey lay dying inside, amid shattered glass and torn metal.

It happened on County Road 675 near Bradenton, June 24, 1997.

``We don't want a penny from them,'' says Audrey's brother, Manuel Matos Jr., whose family owns La Especial Grocery on Columbus Drive in Tampa. ''Everything that we had, they pretty much took away.

``But we want to know: How did it happen? Tell us. How did it happen? That's a piece of our life that's missing.

``Give it back.''

Audrey died quickly. Hector lived an hour. His family shudders thinking of the pain the cowardly trucker inflicted.

They wonder if faster treatment could have saved Hector.

``Don't you think you owe just a little bit of closure to the family of the victim?'' Sgt. Przybylowicz asks. ``So they can know how their relative died, why, and who all the principals were?

``It goes back to a humanistic ideal. We're all out here to take care of everybody else, ultimately.

``We're all responsible for each other.''

When the sirens fade into somber courtrooms, family members focus their rage on the stranger who didn't stop.

There's no longer a chance to be civil.

``I despise him deeply for not coming forward, because of the way we were hurting,'' says Eckhard Schadow, 13-year-old Valerie's father. ``If he would have said, `What happened there, I'm to blame and I feel very sorry, and I wish I could comfort you' - but the guy is a coward.''

No chance to forgive.

``When I first heard, I pictured in my mind, some poor kid has run a stop sign and hit them,'' says Cindy Byrd, daughter to victim Judy Watkins. ``Instead, he was what, a 47-year-old man, nothing but a scrounge who's tried to get out of everything his whole life.''

No chance to console.

``I didn't want to think he was by himself and scared,'' says Colleen Wehinger, whose mentally impaired brother George died in a bicycle crash.

``That upsets me more than anything.''

DRIVERS WIND UP in court through the diligence of detectives and the vigilance of bystanders. Witnesses chase down offenders. Ex-girlfriends call tip lines.

If people don't talk, car parts do.

On a November day in 1998, Tampa Police Detective Paul Southwick searched for the damaged vehicle that killed Abbie Gail Lewis, 37.

He carried a scrap of metal.

The shape told him Oldsmobile Ciera, 1982-1996. The color, medium sapphire blue, told him 1987-1990.

He drove through town with a list of Ciera owners.

``You'd be surprised how many people have a conscience and are relieved when you find them,'' he says.

Conscience or not, they face a felony charge for leaving.

Bank accounts bleed attorney's fees.

Some find they weren't so smart.

They fled a misdemeanor.

That's what happened to Robert Franke. He hit a drunk pedestrian crouched in a St. Petersburg road. A witness saw Franke's license plate. Troopers found him at home, also drunk. He'd driven through a car wash and told his daughter to keep his secret.

If he had stayed, he might only have been charged with simple DUI, a misdemeanor, because of the victim's own bad judgment.

Instead, to DUI, troopers added evidence tampering, witness tampering and leaving the scene of a fatal crash.

Now Franke goes to jail after work each night.

He lost custody of his three children.

``I just wish that he wasn't in the road,'' Franke says. ``I wish I would have left five minutes later or took a different way.''

He wishes he'd stayed.

So does the family of the victim.

They don't pretend James Cohoon was perfect, but since encountering Franke, they feel a little differently about the people who drive past them on St. Petersburg streets.

A little less trusting.

A little more wary.

``Somebody followed him and got the tag number,'' widow Clara Cohoon says. ``They were on the cell phone, telling police, `He's going this way. He's going that way.'

``There's a good Samaritan here and there, I guess.''