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Osceola County Sheriff Marco Lopez shares a hug with Grace Cruz, the mother of Greyshalis Flores, who died in a street racing accident in Osceola County April 2. PHOTO/KEN JACKSON
The last four Thursdays, you’d find Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez at Orlando SpeedWorld’s quarter-mile drag strip for his Take it to the Track anti-street racing awareness initiative.
It’s been mixed emotions. While offering those who want to race a safe place to do it – not on a street mixing with other drivers – Lopez and his law enforcement brethren honored 11-year-old Greyshalis Flores, who died in a street racing accident in Osceola County.
On April 2, Grace Cruz, her mother, was driving a friend and Flores home from a church service, when her SUV was rammed by another car involved in illegal street racing at the corner of U.S. 192 and Secret Lake Drive in the Four Corners area. Cruz and her friend were severely injured, and the wreck unfortunately took Flores’ life.
That death prompted Lopez to bring awareness to illegal street racing – by providing those who want to race a safe and proper place to do it, on a track designed for it.
The Take it To the Track initiative was born. It was four weeks of controlled drag racing at Orlando SpeedWorld in East Orange County, the closest such facility to Osceola County. Thursday was the grand finale of four Thursdays of racing. It attracted over 200 racers from all over the area, sending motorcycles, trucks and all sorts of revved-up passenger cars down the quarter-mile track, a few breaking the 10-second barrier in a run of over 125 m.p.h.
It also attracted deputies from Indian River, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.
“I love the buy-in from the other agencies, it feels like we got what we wanted out of it,” Lopez said Thursday. “We’ve highlighted the awareness of illegal racing.”
Lopez interpreted for Cruz, who said she still carries some anger that people still race irresponsibly, during a short ceremony Thursday.
“She wants to stop illegal street racing,” he said through her. “It feels a little better than people are now doing it the right way legally, and we’re raising awareness that people will come to the track. Yesterday was her child, tomorrow it could be someone else’s. It’s such a tragedy that someone irresponsible impacted her whole family’s life by doing this at the wrong place.”
Lopez said he’d like to continue offering safe racing events to help cure what became a tragic problem for a local family this year.
