Man charged in Lake County DUI manslaughter case and Marion domestic violence case

TAVARES — A man whose two young children died in a car crash has been charged with homicide, DUI, and driving without a license in that Lake County tragedy.

Five months after the April 6, 2022 tragedy, David S. Pelfrey was charged with deliberately hitting a woman with his car and kidnapping her in a domestic violence case in Marion County.

Things are coming to a head for Pelfrey. The State Attorney’s Office has filed a motion for pretrial detention because of the nature of the charges, “the defendant’s past and present pattern of behavior,” and other factors.

The fatal crash occurred on State Road 46 west of Wekiva Pines Boulevard in Sorrento.

A witness told Florida Highway Patrol troopers that Pelfrey was traveling west at a high rate of speed when he crossed a double yellow line on a slight right curve in his 2011 Kia Optima and collided with a 2011 Toyota Tundra, which had pulled onto the shoulder in an attempt to avoid being hit.

The pickup flipped onto its side and burst into flames. The truck driver and four passengers were taken to a hospital with nonlife-threatening injuries.

Dominic Pelfrey, 2, was ejected and Damian Pelfrey, 4, was partially ejected. Daylen Pelfrey, 1, was seriously injured.

A Highway Patrol trooper “observed [Pelfrey] to have slurred speech and an odor of an alcoholic beverage…,” according to the probable cause affidavit.

A witness who ran to the car saw that Pelfrey and a woman were injured and the two children were dead. She told troopers she saw beer cans on the floorboard in the back seat and that she could smell alcohol.

Pelfrey refused to provide a voluntary blood sample. A hospital blood test later concluded that he was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the crash.

Pelfrey’s adult passenger that night told troopers that she let Pelfrey drive because she had been drinking. She said she didn’t realize he had been drinking or that he didn’t have a driver’s license.

She claimed that she had strapped the children into their car seats. She said a van struck the rear of her car in a hit-and-run shortly before the fatal crash, and that Pelfrey stopped to inspect the damage, according to the affidavit.

She told troopers she had no memory of the fatal crash, except that Pelfrey was driving about 65 mph, and that she looked in the back seat to see “everybody dead in my car.” She said she kept “screaming for the babies.”

Pelfrey is charged with DUI manslaughter, vehicular homicide, and operating a vehicle without a driver’s license causing death.

Five months later, he was arrested and charged with using his car as a deadly weapon to commit aggravated battery on a different woman.

The Marion County Sheriff’s Office report said the couple was swimming at Lake Mary in the Ocala National Forest when he reportedly began calling her names. She told him not to speak to her that way and began to walk away. He grabbed her backpack and began pulling her toward the car.

He then got into the car and turned the steering wheel, causing the tire to strike the back of her leg. He got out and tried to force her into the vehicle, but she braced her legs against the vehicle and bit his arm. He kicked her leg, forced her into the car and drove 25 miles to Lake County.

She said he told her he needed to be sure she would still be around when he gets out of jail after being convicted in a domestic charge against another woman.

The other woman is the mother of the children.

A sheriff’s deputy met with that woman at the Fruitland Park Police Department in 2021 where she first denied that physical violence had occurred, despite having bruises on her face and across her body and was bleeding from a cut on her lips. She later admitted that she had been battered for several hours.

“…she lied due to being in fear of the arrestee as well as being financially dependent on the arrestee’s income and in fear the Department of Children and Families would take her children,” the deputy wrote.

The children were present during the incident.

She talked to a DCF worker who advised her to stay in a women’s shelter.

Later, he was arrested and charged with trespassing after warning when he tried to take one of the children from her home.

He was jailed for 45 days in both cases.

He was sentenced to 60 days in jail on another simple battery charge after injuring a neighbor in a dispute with the children’s mother.

The woman has had her own problems. She was arrested on drug possession charges and resisting arrest without arrest in January of 2023. A judge withheld adjudication of guilt and sentenced her to probation.

The Marion County case has not gone to trial.

This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: Man faces felony charges in two cases: One in Lake County, one in Marion