Accused Winter Garden hit-and-run driver in custody

WINTER GARDEN, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) - Authorities have taken into custody a man, accused of a hit-and-run incident involving a Winter Garden toddler.  It happened Monday evening on East Cypress Street.  

Billy Joe Gibson, 35, is charged with leaving the scene of a crash with injuries and driving with a suspended license and was booked into the Orange County Jail late Tuesday afternoon. 

"It was so bad," said Sandra Guerrero, mother of three-year-old Daniel.  She said her son is much better, a day after the incident.  The toddler was out and about on his tricycle playing, but it was a totally different scene on Monday when the child was taken to Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children with a road rash.  "Everybody screaming, and I just get scared. That time you don't know nothing, you just want to see how he's doing."

Daniel's big brother, Luis Garcia, bought him a treat from an ice cream truck which was parked out in front of the house.  Sandra said that's when a passing car clipped her precious little boy as he crossed the street. "He got a big bruise on the side and a big bruise on the head, but they scanned him and they say he's good."

Police said the driver abandoned the car that struck the child, a Chrysler, in the parking lot of a nearby Elks Club and took off.  Investigators tell us Gibson turned himself in after witnesses called police.  "He stated it was him, that when he was driving and hit the child, he freaked out, because he had a suspended license.  He didn't know what else to do," said Lt Scott Allen of the Winter Garden Police Department.  

Sandra hopes no other child goes through this. "It's dangerous right here. There's a lot of kids around here and they want ice cream."

Police said the Chrysler was registered in Gibson's name.