Memorial for girl killed in hit-and-run damaged in another hit-and-run

Writer: Matthew Seaver
Published: Updated:
Memorial for 14-year-old Allana Staiano. (Credit: WINK News)

A family picked up the pieces on Wednesday, repairing a memorial for their daughter who was killed in a hit-and-run. The family says it happened on Tuesday night when it was hit by another hit-and-run driver.

For more than a year, the memorial stood in memory of 14-year-old Allana Staiano who was killed in a hit-and-run crash in January 2020.

“When I got here my daughter’s cross was leaning sideways, everything had been shifted over several feet, there are pieces missing, there was a lot of glass damage. Everything was kind of pushed over. You could see where the car had went over, there were tire treads,” said Allana’s mother Christine Gray. “To stoop to the level of destruction to something like this for a child’s memory, a child who did nothing wrong that’s despicable, that’s disgusting and that kind of person does not need to be in our neighborhood anymore

Gray covered up the memorial before making the necessary repairs. She told WINK News that she believes what happened to the memorial was intentional. “There were too many witnesses that said the vehicle positioned itself just right so that it avoided the mailbox and it’s only a couple feet from the cross and ram straight into it, backed up and then fled the scene so that right there says there’s nothing accidental about that.”

Allana Staiano’s mom said she was angry when she first saw the memorial had been damaged, but now she hopes someone who knows what happened shares what they know with the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.

The family plans to move the memorial further from the road in hopes that something like this will never happen again.

Last month Courtney Gainey pleaded guilty in the hit-and-run crash that killed Allana. Gainey is set to be sentenced in November.

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