PENSACOLA — On the night of Jan. 26, 2024, Krystal Stone received a call letting her know her 17-year-old son, Bradley Ellertson, had died in a car crash.
“When I was first told,” Stone said, “I was just shaking like crazy, and I couldn’t even think straight enough to get dressed.”
Ellertson was a passenger in a car that crashed into a semitruck at the intersection of County Road 196 and Highway 29 in Pensacola. The drivers of both vehicles as well as the other passenger in the car with Ellertson survived.
At first, Florida Highway Patrol believed the driver of the car Ellertson was in had stopped at a stop sign before turning into oncoming traffic. A follow-up investigation revealed the driver ran the stop sign altogether.
That prompted Stone to ask FHP whether it tested the driver’s blood for evidence of drug use. The law enforcement agency did not, citing a lack of probable cause for the test and the driver’s refusal to allow one as the main reasons.
“A preservation of blood should’ve been done right away,” Stone said. “They didn’t know if this was going to be a criminal investigation.”
That’s why Stone created “Bradley’s Law,” a petition to standardize FHP’s policy for DUI or drug testing in cases of vehicle homicides. So far, her petition has 11,086 signatures.
Timing is everything when it comes to accurate drug testing in investigations, according to FHP Lt. Channing Taylor.
“Permanent evidence is short-lived,” he said. “The longer you wait, the lower the readings are usually going to be.”
Still, being able to perform drug tests is not a straightforward process
“I can’t just walk up to somebody and say ‘I want a sample of your blood,’” Lt. Taylor said. “At a crash scene, it might make life a little easier for us, but it just can’t be done, and it shouldn’t be done.”
Nonetheless, Stone said she feels FHP’s policy has to change.
“We want to see them very aggressively handling these investigations, looking for probable cause,” she said. “There’s going to be a reason someone was distracted.”
Stone is not alone in her conviction. Two petitions named “Clayton’s Law” and “Bo and Kaedince’s Law,” respectively, are calling for the same change to FHP’s policy: mandatory drug tests in cases of deadly car crashes. Currently, the former has 24,401 signatures, and the latter has 9,456 signatures.
Stone’s petition has yet to be discussed by Florida lawmakers, but she hopes they will in 2026.