He had coffee. She had Powerade. They both ate doughnuts.
Just before 11 a.m. on Dec. 8, Emily Hilliard, 35, and her boyfriend, Michael Christopher Baynard, 32, were getting breakfast at Hands of Hope, an outreach program from Plant City church New Hope @ Cornerstone.
“I thought it was kind of cool,” Outreach Director Jennifer Anderson said. “One of my workers told them to come back on Saturday for breakfast. They told them Jesus loves them and so do we.”
Hilliard turned as she and Baynard were leaving.
“We’re gonna come back,” she said. “We’ll see you in the morning.”
Barely an hour later, both lay on the pavement just over a mile apart. Her, dead after being struck by a white Ford pickup truck when she fell from a moving mini-van on Alexander Street near Interstate 4. Him, laying across Baker Street near the Bruton Memorial Library, struck by the same gray Honda mini-van.
Police arrested the van’s driver, Todd Charles Riggs, 55, of Largo, at the scene.
The Plant City Police Department released a statement Tuesday stating it does not know why Baynard stepped into the van’s path on Baker Street.
“Riggs was operating the Honda mini-van westbound on W. Baker Street, when, for an unknown reason, a pedestrian later identified as white male Michael Christopher Baynard, 32, of Plant City, Florida, stepped onto W. Baker Street and into the path of the mini-van. Baynard was struck,” PCPD Spokesperson Al Van Duyne said in the statement.
Van Duyne later said PCPD did not know why Hilliard was in Riggs’ van, where they were coming from, or if Hilliard and Baynard knew each other. Eyewitnesses and those familiar with the two, however, tell a different story.
“He had said ‘that’s my wife,’” Jonathon Adams, a volunteer with New Hope, said. “Chris is her boyfriend.”
According to multiple witnesses, Adams was with Hilliard and Baynard that day. He had known the two through Plant City’s homeless community for months. Adams said the two left together while he was still helping out at Hands of Hope, but he met up with them a short time later outside an apartment on Baker Street near the library.
“Emily said she had to meet a guy to get money,” Adams said. “They were going to meet at the library. She wanted to do it in a public place. She said she’d be back in five minutes.”
A few minutes later, he said, they heard a scream that “sounded like a dog getting run over by a car.” The screams got louder. They saw a van peel around the corner, south on Wheeler Street turning west on Baker. Hilliard hung from the open passenger door, a pair of flip-flops the only thing between her brown-painted toenails and the pavement she reached for. Riggs pulled her back in by the collar of her shirt, causing him to swerve and fishtail between lanes as she cried to Baynard for help.
“He ran into the street waving his arms and trying to get him to stop,” Adams said. “The guy floored it. He hit Chris on the driver side and Chris cartwheeled. He flipped twice.”
Riggs, police said, “failed to stop or render aid before fleeing the scene.”
Adams and friends rushed to Baynard.
“A minute or two later we heard the sirens,” Adams said. “It felt like forever.”
Then, Adams and his friends saw an officer approaching on a motorcycle. They thought he was coming for Baynard, but he was headed further up the road. Adams said they got his attention and, after a brief stop, the officer said he had to go to a traffic fatality.
Adams followed the officer down Baker and north onto Alexander Street. When they reached the eastbound entrance to I-4, both stopped.
“That’s where we found Emily,” Adams said. “She was dead.”
Riggs was charged with “leaving the scene of a crash without rending aid, involving injury and driving under the influence, with personal injury.”
PCPD said additional criminal charges may be pending as the traffic fatality and hit and run are now joined by a homicide investigation.
According to records from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, Riggs has been arrested about 10 times in Hillsborough County, with most charges relating to drugs or battery. As of Wednesday, he was being held without bail in Hillsborough County Jail.
Baynard was transported to Lakeland Regional Health and treated for non-life threatening injuries.
PCPD said the driver who struck Hilliard will not be facing any charges.
In a converted service station on Baker Street, just east of where Baynard was hit by the van five days earlier, Anderson addressed a group at Hands of Hope in downtown Plant City Wednesday morning. They gathered for a lunch of chili and rice cooked by her husband. Before they bowed their heads to bless their meal, she reassured the crowd that in the face of tragedy, they had somewhere to turn.
“You have us here so you don’t need to be out there,” she said. “Whenever anything happens to you out there, you come to us.”