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Did you see who hit panhandler near Selmon and drove away?

 
Jess Paez, pictured clean shaven in 2018 and bearded in 2017, had been charged with roadside solicitation in those years and also in 2014. Tampa police are now looking for the driver of a vehicle that struck him late Sunday or early Saturday before leaving the scene. He was found on a Willow Avenue entrance ramp to the Selmon Expressway on Sunday morning. [Tampa Police Department]
Jess Paez, pictured clean shaven in 2018 and bearded in 2017, had been charged with roadside solicitation in those years and also in 2014. Tampa police are now looking for the driver of a vehicle that struck him late Sunday or early Saturday before leaving the scene. He was found on a Willow Avenue entrance ramp to the Selmon Expressway on Sunday morning. [Tampa Police Department]
Published April 23, 2018

TAMPA — A man with a history of arrests for roadside soliciting has been found dead at the side of a road.

Jess Paez, 51, was identified by Tampa police Monday as the victim of an apparent hit-and-run crash over the weekend. His body was found about 10 a.m. Sunday on an entrance ramp to the Selmon Expressway.

"It is believed he was struck sometime late Saturday or early Sunday," police spokesman Steve Hegarty said in a news release.

Witnesses are asked to call police at (813) 231-6130.

Paez was found at an expressway entrance near Cleveland Street and Willow Avenue, just a block from where he was arrested for roadside solicitation on the evening of April 1.

The ramp, a few blocks south of Kennedy Boulevard, is where vehicles enter the Selmon's westbound lanes.

Police don't know if he was soliciting at the time of his fatal injuries.

No arrests have been made and no vehicle has been identified, Hegarty said. Investigators are awaiting a medical examiner's approximation of the time of death in order to narrow a search of surveillance video.