Less than a day after a 23-year-old Palm Coast woman was cleared of charges after she was apparently falsely accused of causing last October’s crash that killed three people on I-4, including Deputy Flagler County Administrator Jorge Salinas, a 47-year-old Deltona woman was arrested on the same charges.
Alisa Lee Montalvo, of Lydia Drive in Deltona, was booked at the county jail in Volusia County on nine counts, including three counts of vehicular homicide, three counts of leaving the scene of a crash with a death (or hit and run involving a fatality), leaving the scene of a crash with a serious bodily injury, reckless driving, and tampering with physical evidence.
Montalvo, too, was driving a Dodge Durango. Hers was maroon. The other Durango was black. It was that sort of coincidence.
The Florida Highway Patrol charged Lindsey Brooke Isaacs with the first eight counts, and her vehicle, a Dodge Durango, had been impounded since within hours of the crash on I-4. But the State Attorney’s Office never filed an information, the document formalizing the charges, and on Friday, announced that it would not pursue the charges. The office did not issue a statement, as it customarily does not explain why it dismisses charges unless they are part of a plea.
But either because the dismissal of the case quickly drew outrage, or because it had been planned all along, Montalvo’s arrest soon followed. Montalvo was booked at the jail at 11:33 p.m. She had her first appearance before a judge at 8:30 this morning. She is being held on no bond on the three vehicular homicide charges and $435,000 bond on the remaining charges. Her arrest affidavit was not yet available, suggesting that the arrest may have been rushed to quell the response to the dismissal of the earlier charges.
Montalvo had been charged with drunk driving in 2010. The charge was reduced to reckless driving, to which she pleaded no contest and served six months on probation.
As now appears to have been the case all along, Montalvo’s arrest vindicates the claim by Isaacs’s attorney, Marc Dwyer, that authorities had been committing a grave mistake, both by having charged Isaacs and by keeping her vehicle impounded, though it is not yet clear whether the same or a different Durango was involved in the crash.
The facts of the Oct. 4, 2025 crash itself are unchanged. As laid out in the previous charging affidavit, a witness saw a Durango allegedly trigger the chain reaction as the Durango first struck a Ford Focus, then a Suzuki motorcycle, sending the Focus against a guardrail. The Focus catapulted back into the line of traffic, striking the Honda Pilot that Jorge Salinas was driving, with his wife, Nancy, in the passenger seat as the couple was returning from a day at Disney. The collision forced the Pilot off the road. It crashed into a tree, killing Jorge and Nancy Salinas. The motorcyclist, Joaquin Deno, 54, was also killed.
Isaacs’s Durango had been on I-4 that night as she was returning from seeing a friend in Davenport. License plate readers led authorities to her residence at Integra Woods apartments in Palm Coast that night, where the vehicle was impounded. Isaacs maintained her innocence throughout.
Dwyer in a civil suit contested the indefinite impounding of the vehicle. A judge ruled in favor of FHP in that case. But Dwyer in a motion in the criminal case argued that FHP’s case against his client was flimsy, as it relied on circumstantial evidence to draw conclusions against her, including the apparent absence of marks on the Durango pointing to a collision with the motorcycle.
If, as now appears to be implicitly the case, FHP charged the wrong person, the error would be a grave miscarriage that, as Dwyer said in an interview on Friday, was stopped in time “before it got worse.” Dwyer could not be reached today.
Without Montalvo’s charging affidavit, which may not be available until Tuesday, much remains unexplained.
Al says
Hopefully they will quickly return her vehi le and compensate her for all expenses she incurred. This should not only be legal fees but also car payments, insurance cost, lost income and something for her anguish while this has been going on.
Casey says
To write ‘it was that sort of coincidence’ implying that the dark colors of both cars is what caused Lindsay Isaacs to be unjustly arrested for this tragedy is preposterous.
Flaglerlive reporting at the time of her arrest explained that license plate readers established her vehicle as the Dodge Durango responsible for the crash.
Other outlets are reporting the state looked into discrepancies in the FHP investigation and discovered a 911 call describing a maroon dodge Durango as responsible as well as the first 3 digits of its license plate.
It’s hard to imagine what a nightmare this has been for Lindsay Isaacs.
Mike R says
The real problem is that too many judges automatically back law enforcement even when the officers haven’t done basic due diligence. Police are supposed to be our line of defense, but too often the priority seems to be quick closures and easy arrests — the same mindset that drives prosecutors.
How does FHP take a random plate‑reader hit and decide, “This is the suspect,” with no damage, no witness, no plate number, and no corroborating evidence? Instead of investigating, they arrested an innocent girl and seized her vehicle for weeks. That isn’t policing — that’s guessing with handcuffs.
Now taxpayers will foot the bill when FHP gets sued, and nothing changes because the system shields bad decisions instead of correcting them.
Training needs to change. The academy is not enough. Too many officers don’t understand the law, investigative standards, or the burden of proof required before taking someone’s freedom.
This case is exactly why people lose trust.
Me says
Sounds like Patel was in charge of this botched investigation.