What Was She Doing the Night She Died?
The evening of May 16 into the early hours of May 17, Akey was driving south on I-75 after attending a wedding. She pulled over to fill up her gas tank before getting back on the highway, and while she was stopped, she sent her family a text.
She told them she had gotten gas. She told them she loved them. That was the last message they received from her.
Just after 1 a.m., Florida Department of Transportation traffic cameras near mile marker 150 in Charlotte County captured what would later become a criminal exhibit: a Ford F-150 completing a full U-turn directly into the northbound lanes of I-75.
Akey couldn’t have seen it coming. Her car was one of two struck head-on in the collision that followed. Florida Highway Patrol troopers arrived to find the harrowing aftermath: Akey was gone, and a woman in the second vehicle, along with her 12-year-old and 15-year-old passengers, suffered serious injuries.
A third car clipped debris from the wreckage but sustained only minor damage, with no injuries reported.
Who Was the Driver Responsible?
Behind the wheel of the F-150 was Dennis Lee Olson, 53, of Lehigh Acres, Florida. When troopers administered a blood alcohol test, his level came back at 0.222, nearly three times Florida’s legal limit of 0.08.
FHP Trooper Ken Watson said, “This is someone who made a horrible decision, and it cost someone their life and seriously injured three other people.”
What emerged from a background check made the tragedy harder to absorb. Olson held a Minnesota driver’s license, and court records from that state showed he had been down this road before.
The South St. Paul Police Department arrested him for a misdemeanor DWI in 2019. He served two years of probation and was required to complete a Mothers Against Drunk Driving course. He completed it. Seven years later, he got behind the wheel drunk again, this time on a Florida interstate after midnight.
