Mary Mosely Dukes, 46, was killed when the Jeep in which she was riding flipped into a canal. The driver, a 17-year-old who witnesses say was drinking that day, was going over four times the speed limit. He was never charged with a crime.

*Editor’s note: With her family’s consent, Mary Mosely Dukes is referenced below by her maiden name, Mosely, to make it easier for readers to follow the story.

Blazing past a 15 mph speed limit sign and three left-turn warning signs, the 2015 Jeep Wrangler plowed down a fourth warning sign before veering right across the center of Flying Cow Road in Wellington and into a raised dirt berm.

The impact snapped the neck of passenger Mary Mosely Dukes, whose side of the vehicle took the brunt of the front-end impact.

Before she had a chance to register the pain, the black Jeep flipped into a small pond, and Mosely fought to breathe as water swirled up around her.

The driver, Justin Case Neely, was able to quickly free himself. But he couldn’t get Mosely out.

<< WELLINGTON READERS: Sign up for The Post’s weekly Wellington newsletter here

Three passers-by stopped to help, but the overturned Jeep, with only its undercarriage and tires visible, had sunk into thick mud that all but glued the passenger door closed.

Around 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 15, 2019, in the blistering heat, strapped in her seat belt and hanging upside down with a broken neck, Mosely drowned. The water was shallow enough to stand in.

“I can’t sleep at night,” said Antannio Dukes, Mary’s husband of 26 years. “That was my baby. I met her when I was 15. It doesn't make sense, and I'm not getting answers.”

An investigation by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office paints a clear picture of the crash, but diverging tales of events leading to the tragedy are as murky as the water in which Mosely drowned.

And even murkier — why the driver was never charged with a crime. Neely walked away without so much as a ticket, despite evidence that was included, and, according to the Dukes family, blatantly disregarded.

Although not yet filed, Mosely’s family said they are planning a civil suit against Neely. Citing the absence of a guardrail, they are also pursuing civil action for wrongful death against the village of Wellington, Department of Transportation, Palm Beach County, and “any other entities who may be liable regarding this incident.”

'Sunday Funday'

On the surface, Neely and Mosely seemed an unlikely pair: Neely, a 17-year-old high school student from Wellington, and Mosely, a 46-year-old, married mother of three and grandmother from Belle Glade.

But the two were friends, of sorts. They met at Hot Shots Paintball in Loxahatchee Groves, where they both worked.

“Miss Mary loved everyone like they were her own kids, and Justin was no exception,” said Rudineo Atkins, 26, who works at Hot Shots and was friends with Mosely and Neely.

.img-100{ width: 100% !important; padding:0 !important; margin: 0 0 5px 0 !important; } .img-100 img{ margin-bottom:5px !important; } .img-100-caption{ font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size:.8em !important; line-height:110% !important; text-align: left; margin: 0!important; padding: 0!important; } Mary Mosely Dukes, shortly before her death, with new granddaughter Nora. Mosely, a passenger in a Jeep driven by 17-year-old Justin Neely, was killed when the Jeep flipped into a pond. [Photo provided by Dukes family]

Atkins grew up around Mosely; their families were friends. He said she was like a second mother to him. A hugger and caretaker by nature, Mosely was known to embrace everyone she met.

“She was always in a good mood with happy, positive energy,” Atkins said. “If you were having a down day, she would just be bubbly and crack jokes. Her energy was infectious.”

Mosely began working as a front end cashier and event planner at Hot Shots in 2017 after returning from Georgia to her native Florida to tend to her ailing mother.

She met Neely in March 2018 when Neely was hired at Hot Shots as a referee. But Neely didn’t get along with the boss and was fired after only six weeks because of “antics” and “how he carried himself and went about his job,” Atkins explained.

Neely, however, continued to hang around Hot Shots playing paintball, meeting up with friends, and according to some, drinking alcohol.

“We play with grown men for the most part,” said 21-year-old Salathio Sargent, a Hot Shots employee and friend of both Neely and Mosely. “One of them brought [beer] and Justin had one.”

Sargent said he watched Neely drink a beer around 10 a.m. the morning of the crash. Others, he said, saw it, too.

Neely posted a photo that morning on Snapchat of a hand — purportedly his own — sitting in what appears to be his Jeep holding a Corona Light. He captioned it “Sunday Funday.”

.img-100{ width: 100% !important; padding:0 !important; margin: 0 0 5px 0 !important; } .img-100 img{ margin-bottom:5px !important; } .img-100-caption{ font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size:.8em !important; line-height:110% !important; text-align: left; margin: 0!important; padding: 0!important; } Photo posted on Neely’s Snapchat account hours before the crash that killed 46-year-old Mary Mosely Dukes. PBSO did not question witnesses to Neely’s alleged drinking and no charges were filed against Neely.

Mosely’s son, 23-year-old Antonio Dukes (spelled differently than father Antannio), who was friends with Neely and also used to work at Hot Shots, took a screenshot of the post. He saved it after hearing from mutual friends that Neely was drinking before the crash.

He said he showed the photo to sheriff‘s deputies and even gave them Sargent's phone number as a witness to Neely’s drinking.

“No,” Sargent said about being contacted by the sheriff‘s office or any other investigator. “[Antonio] said someone would reach out to me, but I never got a call.”

Sargent said he and Neely went to Global Mart Tobacco & Vapes of Loxahatchee between noon and 1 p.m. the day of the crash. The small, dark store specializes in items such as glass pipes, CBD products and craft beer but also sells things like sandwiches and bait.

When asked to verify what Neely bought that day, the market manager said surveillance video is erased after 10 days, and receipts are destroyed after two weeks. Investigators, he said, never contacted him for the information.

Neely’s friends have found themselves in a tough spot since the crash. Each said they still care about Neely, but they also loved Mosely and want the truth to be known about what happened that day. But no one at the sheriff‘s office, they said, was interested in hearing about it.

The department‘s investigation said it “conducted an impairment assessment” of Neely that “showed no indicators of drug or alcohol use.”

But that “assessment” was not done until after deputies completed their interview with Neely, which did not begin until at least 5:45 p.m. — over three hours after the crash, the report showed.

The assessment also failed to include a blood test, urine test, or toxicology test, according to deputies.

But a toxicology test was performed on Mosely. She was found to have marijuana in her system — something her husband said she occasionally used to control pain from a recent surgery.

“I'm so upset. They didn’t do a toxicology on him because he didn’t look impaired?” said Antannio Dukes, racked with frustration that neither he nor so many other witnesses were ever contacted. “My wife had marijuana — ask me about that . . . ask me anything!”

The sheriff‘s office’s entire investigation into Neely’s drinking is delineated in a single sentence in the report: “A message was left, but I have not received a call back,” it said about calling “a possible witness” who “had apparently seen [Neely] drinking earlier in the day of the crash.”

Several people who know Neely said he was known to drink alcohol. Sargent said Neely “sometimes” drank at Hot Shots, although both Sargent and a Hot Shots manager stressed that drinking is strictly forbidden on the premises.

“I know he did drink, and he was underage, but it was not going to have any effect on how he was driving three to four hours later,” Sargent said, convinced that alcohol was not a factor in the crash. “He’s a young driver, and it’s a Jeep, so anything could happen. It’s just a mishap. Nothing we can really control.”

Quadruple the speed limit

According to the sheriff‘s office investigation, the event data recorder (EDR) in the Jeep showed that, five seconds before the crash, Neely approached the sharp left turn in the road at 63 mph. The speed limit on the turn is 15 mph.

But Neely told deputies he was going 30-35 mph.

The EDR showed Neely hit the brakes for five seconds, but was still traveling 30 mph when the Jeep smashed into the raised berm and flipped.

.img-100{ width: 100% !important; padding:0 !important; margin: 0 0 5px 0 !important; } .img-100 img{ margin-bottom:5px !important; } .img-100-caption{ font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size:.8em !important; line-height:110% !important; text-align: left; margin: 0!important; padding: 0!important; } Justin Neely approached the 15 mph turn going south on Flying Cow Road in Wellington at 65 mph, hit a raised berm and flipped his Jeep into a pond. Neely walked away, but passenger Mary Mosely Dukes was killed. Neely was never cited.

And speed is not the only subject on which Neely’s story diverges from evidence and witnesses.

Neely, as he would tell investigators, said the reason he was with Mosely that day was to go “mudding.”

Indeed, the investigation concluded that the two were on their way to go “off-road driving.” But the only source cited for that conclusion is a statement from Neely. And it contradicts statements from seven other people, several of whom saw both Mosely and Neely that day.

“Like, what is mudding? What is that?” said 27-year-old Antwinique Dukes, Mosely’s daughter. “My mom would have never gone for that. No, no, no. That’s a no.”

“Mudding” — or “dusting” as it’s called on dry days — is a pseudo-sport that involves driving erratically through mud or dirt until the vehicle is coated in brown slime.

It is something Neely’s friends said he enjoyed and did fairly regularly.

A manager at Hot Shots said Mosely was scheduled to work from 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 15, the day of the crash. He called her a “reliable, hard-working” employee who would not walk out in the middle of a shift to go play.

Mosely’s husband said the idea that his wife would leave her job to thrash around in the mud with Neely, or anyone else, is absurd.

“That would have been the furthest thing away from my wife’s wish list of things to do, I can assure you that,” said Antannio Dukes.

And for good reason. His wife, he explained, had recently undergone her second hip replacement in six months. She was in pain, and the last thing the 5-foot-10, 308-pound woman would want was to be whipped around in a dirty Jeep.

“I can’t imagine the look on my wife’s face when he sped up on a dirt road,” he said of the image in his mind of his wife’s final moments with Neely. “There would be no way she would have participated in that. No way.”

Besides, he said, Mosely hated speed.

“I got a few slaps in the back of the head for speeding,” he said. “She wasn’t adventurous at all. At all.”

Antwinique Dukes agreed. Her mom, she said, hated going fast.

But not Neely. Antwinique Dukes said Neely was “known for driving like that” — something supported by statements from several of Neely’s friends.

Mosely, however, was the opposite, each person said.

“She was definitely the most cautious driver I’ve ever been on the road with except my grandmother,” said Atkins, adding that Mosely used to drive him home from work. “She hated going fast.”

Diverging stories

That Neely would tell deputies he and Mosely were going mudding is mind-boggling to her family members and several Hot Shots employees.

“I was supposed to be riding with [Neely],” a 15-year-old employee said about going to pick up lunch the day of the crash.

Bringing back lunch was something employees at Hot Shots did fairly regularly: someone, or maybe two people, would collect orders and go pick them up from a local fast-food joint.

Neely, who had been hanging around playing paintball since mid-morning, offered to drive the girl to pick up lunch, she said.

“Then I offered for Mary to go, because I thought she'd have a nice time because she was working the morning shift,” the girl said.

Mosely, however, was hesitant to leave the young trainee alone.

“She was like, ‘Are you sure? Do you want me to stay with you?’” the girl said.

No, she told Mosely, she would be fine. But the girl did have some parting words for Neely: “I just said, ‘Make sure she comes back,’ and, ‘You gotta be safe.’”

The choice for lunch that day was Bolay, about eight miles from Hot Shots. The shortest route is due east on Southern Boulevard and then south on State Road 7.

But Neely didn’t go that way. Instead, he took Flying Cow Road, a longer, round-about route past the South Florida Water Management District, horse ranches, sprawling estates and a golf course.

Just over four miles down Flying Cow Road, the pavement ends and the dirt road becomes rough and dusty. The rural area, Neely told deputies, is just west of where he liked to go mudding and where he was taking Mosely.

No charges filed

The sheriff‘s department investigation, completed a month after Mosely’s death, found Neely at fault for the crash. But it did not find him culpable for Mosely’s death.

The report showed he violated one state statute: failure to maintain a single lane.

.img-100{ width: 100% !important; padding:0 !important; margin: 0 0 5px 0 !important; } .img-100 img{ margin-bottom:5px !important; } .img-100-caption{ font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif !important; font-size:.8em !important; line-height:110% !important; text-align: left; margin: 0!important; padding: 0!important; } Justin Neely blew past a 15 mph sign before skidding off Flying Cow Road in Wellington, hitting a raised berm, and flipping his Jeep into a shallow pond. The crash broke the neck of passenger Mary Mosely Dukes, who then drowned while trapped in the car. No charges were ever filed against Neely. [Photo provided by PBSO]

According to the sheriff‘s office and public records, no tickets were issued and no charges ever filed against Neely — not for failure to maintain, speeding, unintentional vehicular homicide or anything else.

“It really bothers me, because they say she drowned, so that takes any responsibility away from the driver?” said Antannio Dukes. “If [the drowning] wouldn’t have killed her, she would have been paralyzed for life, anyways.”

The sheriff‘s office said the case is closed, and that the facts did not support criminal prosecution against Neely.

When asked why no tickets were issued and why investigators neglected to interview witnesses who may have had important information, the office referred questions to State Attorney Dave Aronberg’s office.

“We never actually reviewed the case,” said Mike Edmondson, Aronberg’s executive assistant. “We don’t actually review all traffic deaths; they have to have determined that there was a crime committed for us to review them.”

While that answer may seem surprising, Ellen Roberts, a former assistant state attorney for Palm Beach County, said it is par for the course these days.

“There are a lot of cases like that,” she said, referring to the Neely case. “They changed [how traffic deaths are investigated] after I left. I don’t know why, but they did.”

Roberts, who retired in 2012 after 26 years as assistant state attorney and 20 years as chief of traffic homicide, said that since Aronberg took office, if officers on the scene of a traffic-related death do not cite evidence of criminal negligence, the case is closed without reaching the state attorney.

She disagrees with the policy.

“There were a lot of fatalities that officers didn’t think constituted a crime, but the attorney would think did,” she said of how traffic deaths used to be prosecuted.

Roberts reviewed the Neely case and said she understood why deputies did not issue a speeding ticket.

“You can’t just use the evidence from the black box,” Roberts said of the EDR. “It has to occur in the officer’s presence.”

But she did question letting Neely walk.

“I’m surprised they didn’t at least issue a citation for failing to maintain a single lane,” she said.

The answers raise more questions for the Dukes family.

“I don't understand how they can investigate the death of my wife and not talk to a single member of her family,” Antannio Dukes said. “It just blows my mind that a toxicology wasn’t done on that guy, and my wife is sitting there dead. They were more worried about his rights than hers.”

He questioned whether Neely’s family connections may have influenced investigators.

Nancy Neely, Justin Neely’s mother, has worked in human resources for the city of West Palm Beach, where the sheriff‘s office is headquartered, for 35 years.

It is a connection, and possible explanation for what they see as a weak investigation, that is not lost on the Dukes’ family.

“I’m invincible,” Antannio Dukes said about the message that lack of accountability for Mosely’s death might send to Neely. “If my parents have enough relationships, then I have to take no responsibility, because I’m far removed from it, and my parents did a damn good job of getting this covered up.”

The inequity, or what he hesitantly referred to as “privilege,” began immediately following the crash, Antannio Dukes said.

Reports show Neely’s parents were present at Palms West Hospital around 5:45 p.m. when investigators arrived to interview Neely.

But the Dukes family was not notified of the crash or Mosely’s death until 5:30 p.m., they said.

Repeated calls to the sheriff‘s office in the following weeks went unanswered, said Antannio Dukes, and deputies never reached out to him after the initial notification.

The final investigation report supports that claim.

'Mamma' Mary loved by all

The death of “Mamma,” or “Miss Mary” as people called her, has left a void in the lives of those who loved her.

“When everything is quiet, I think, I know Miss Mary would be laughing and joking with us,” said Atkins of the shadow that has hung over Hot Shots since Mosely’s death.

Neely doesn’t come around anymore, he said. He’s seen his former friend once since the crash.

One day about a month or so ago, Atkins said, he ran into Neely on the street. Atkins took the opportunity to pose some questions about Mosely’s death but said Neely wouldn’t say much, mumbling something about lawyers.

But Atkins did have something to say.

“I let him know I forgave him,” Atkins said. “That was the biggest thing for me. I asked him about his well-being.”

Despite everything that happened, Mosely’s son, Antonio Dukes, also does not speak ill of Neely. But the pain his former friend has caused his family is evident.

“He’s a good kid,” said Antonio Dukes, and then hesitated. “But, what I know about him is, he has a limit to where he plays entirely too much. He takes things too far.”

Rather than being angry at Neely, who is now 18, the Dukes family said they are hurt that he has never reached out to them.

“I haven’t even heard from him or his parents,” said Antannio Dukes. “Nothing. No ‘I’m sorry.’ Nothing.”

About 18 co-workers from Hot Shots attended Mosely’s funeral. Neely did not. And friends said they worry he is headed down the wrong path.

“People talk,” said Atkins, shaking his head. “He’s still doing some of the same things that got him in trouble. But, I have remorse for him.”

Today, the Dukes family is still struggling to find a way to move forward after the loss of their matriarch. In the meantime, they have nothing but gratitude for the outpouring of kindness and good-will from the many people who loved “Mamma.”

“After she passed, we got calls from people who were so upset, we had to comfort them,” said Antwinique Dukes. “They’d say, ‘I know she was your mom, but she was our mom, too.’”

Justin Neely did not return a call for an interview request. His mother, Nancy Neely, called in his stead, saying the family “had nothing to hide.” She asked for a list of questions, and after being provided them, said she would call back with answers. She never did.

wrhodes@pbpost.com

@WendyRhodesFL