ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Diane Hernandez is a grandmother on a mission to save others from her grandson's fate.
Hernandez said the 18-year-old was abandoned and left to die earlier this year.
And now she’s working to make failing to help a dying person a crime.
Hernandez is working to get a bill introduced next year, even though efforts to pass a Good Samaritan law have failed before.
A senator and some representatives tried to update the good Samaritan law last year after a group of teens recorded the drowning death of a disabled Cocoa Beach man.
Hernandez said, if the failure to help someone was already a crime, her grandson might be alive today.
Two people tried, saw him before he died and didn't do nothing about it at all,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said her grandson, 18-year-old Adrian Diaz, was celebrating joining the military with friends when he became so drunk he fell unconscious.
The friend driving him told investigators he left Diaz behind a hotel near the University of Central Florida and went for help.
A police report shows someone staying at the hotel also saw Diaz intoxicated in the grass next to a retention pond but didn't do anything to help.
Diaz was found dead in the pond the next morning.
Hernandez's petition to change the law now has almost 3,000 signatures.
Representative John Cortes, who drafted a new bill, said this is important enough to try again.
“You know you're going to get feedback from people saying, ‘Oh, no, we don't need this. We already have the Good Samaritan law,’" Cortes said. “But the Good Samaritan law is not working. People are dying.”
Hernandez thinks she can help move legislators if she gets statewide support for her local effort.
The Orange County Sheriff's Office confirms they are still investigating Diaz's death.
Hernandez said under current law, she has no hope their family will ever get justice inside the courthouse.
She just hopes other families won't have to suffer the same way she has.
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Cox Media Group
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