In articles posted by Bay News 9 and Fox 13, the manager of the Green Key Motel claims in an interview that poor lighting was to blame for the deaths last week of Taryn Baber, 37, and Mike Acosta, 42. According to friends of the couple, they had been at Wing House celebrating the news that the couple was expecting. “They had just found out they were expecting,” said Lynn Oliveira, a friend. “I feel bad that they’re gone. I feel sorry for their families, their children that they left behind.”

Michael Morgenstern, the manager of the Green Key Motel, said there was a shortage of crosswalks and lighting. “There’s no lighting except for what the businesses produce up and down 19, and the next crosswalk is 1.5 miles away.”

NewsPortRichey looked at the location of the accident and determined that there are street lights in the area, but two of the five nearby were out when the location was visited. The lights are maintained by Duke Energy, not the City of New Port Richey. The nearest crosswalk is also 0.2 miles from the Wing House restaurant and hotel, making the total walk for a pedestrian from one location to the other 0.4 miles. However, the next crosswalk to the north of that location is 1.8 miles away, not 1.5 miles.

The revelation that one of the pedestrians was pregnant would bring the total death toll to last Friday night to four.

by Jon Tietz