{"id":40503,"date":"2023-12-25T19:16:12","date_gmt":"2023-12-26T00:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=40503"},"modified":"2023-12-25T19:16:32","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T00:16:32","slug":"lakeland-woman-in-motorized-wheelchair-hit-and-killed-on-christmas-eve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/12\/25\/lakeland-woman-in-motorized-wheelchair-hit-and-killed-on-christmas-eve\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland woman in motorized wheelchair hit and killed on Christmas Eve"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A woman in a motorized wheelchair was hit and killed by a suspected drunken driver on Christmas Eve in Polk County, according to the sheriff\u2019s office.<\/p>\n\n\n

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40-year-old Leslie Stone was riding her motorized wheelchair across West Pipkin Road in Lakeland Sunday evening when she was allegedly hit by Howard Bennett, 67, of Plant City, deputies said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 6:00 p.m. that evening,\u00a0Howard Bennett, DOB 1\/16\/1956<\/strong>,\u00a0of Old Mulberry Road in Plant City, was heading east down West Pipkin Road approaching the intersection with Fairfield Drive in Lakeland in his 2019 silver Mazda CX5, when he struck Leslie Stone who was on her powered wheelchair mobility device heading east on the roadway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bennett was allegedly stumbling while walking and had bloodshot eyes, according to deputies. Bennett\u2019s two blood samples revealed that his BAC was nearly twice the legal limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur prayers are with Ms. Stone\u2019s family,\u201d Sheriff Grady Judd said in a statement. \u201cTo lose a loved one this way is awfully tragic, especially during the holiday season. We hope and pray our citizens will make better choices than this suspect did \u2014 please celebrate the holidays responsibly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Bennett is charged with DUI manslaughter, DUI .15 or higher with property damage, and DUI with property damage, according to deputies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A woman in a motorized wheelchair was hit and killed by a suspected drunken driver on Christmas Eve in Polk County, according to the sheriff\u2019s office. 40-year-old Leslie Stone was… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"14","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[7145],"class_list":["post-40503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-lakeland-woman-in-motorized-wheelchair-hit-and-killed-on-christmas-eve"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}