Port St. Lucie police looking for help in fatal hit and run accident

PORT ST. LUCIE - Port St. Lucie police are looking for help in a fatal hit and run accident.

Melted candles mark the spot where friends of 21 year-old Tazra Gross held a vigil Monday night. Gross died on Memorial Day, two days after she was struck from behind by a vehicle.

Gross had just moved into her friend Victoria Hinchcliff's home two weeks ago.

Saturday night, the pair was walking down SW Chapman Avenue just down the block from their home.  It was just before 11 at night.  There are no sidewalks in the neighborhood so Gross was walking just in the roadway.

"We're walking, touching elbows.  I hear the truck coming.  I see the truck coming, I know it's a Dodge because I see the bezels. Before I can look at her and say her name, he had already hit her, and by the time I face forward I see her body being carried by the truck," recalled Hinchcliff.

Hinchcliff said the truck stopped momentarily, as if to shake off her friends body, then left.

"I ran up there to her, she's absolutely unresponsive.  You can feel the fluid filling up in her lungs," said Hinchcliff.

Shein Myers is Gross' ex-boyfriend.

"She was a good girl.  Good with kids.  At her friends house we used to help baby sit kids together," said Myers.

If this truly was just an accident, police say the driver created a lot of problems for themselves by just taking off.

"Since this person failed to stop, this is now a criminal investigation instead of a civil investigation, said Tom Nichols with the Port St. Lucie Police Department.

Gross' friends now left to wonder why their friend had to die this way.  The suspects vehicle is described as a black or dark colored Dodge Dakota.