Mother, daughter struck and killed by vehicle in Crystal Lake

CRYSTAL LAKE, Fla. (WFLA) – Deputies are investigating an early-morning collision that left a mother and her daughter dead on Sunday. 

The Polk County Sheriff’s Office was called to Skyview Drive and Goodyear Avenue at about 2:45 a.m.

Deputies said a man was driving a white Dodge Ram, traveling eastbound on Skyview Drive when he thought he saw a trash bag and tried to swerve around it, but ran over something. He pulled over and drove back to the scene of the crash and learned he had struck two pedestrians. He called law enforcement and waited.

Venus Drayton, 33 and her daughter Tiara Johnson, 16 were both hit by the vehicle and suffered fatal injuries. 

Markella Griffin moved next door to Drayton and Johnson a couple of weeks ago. She called the incident a tragedy. 

“Something told me to look out the window and tha’s when I seen the ambulance,” Griffin recalled. “I looked on the ground, it looked like a bunch of trash, I had no idea it was a body.”