Family still fighting for stricter texting while driving laws nearly 20 years after 12-year-old’s death
By Yasmine Julmisse
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FLORIDA (WPBF) — “When he was born, it really changed things. I feel like he completed us,” said Delpha Clarke Samuels, owner of Queens Academy and former Mrs. Florida International.
Samuels is remembering her younger brother, E’arron James Haley, during what would have been his 30th year of life.
“He definitely was a person who had a lot of energy. He was the life of the party,” Samuels said. “He was just an overall lovable child — like what you would expect out of a 12-year-old.”
On a summer day in 2008, E’arron went to play outside near their Broward County home.
“E’arron decided he wanted to go skating, ride his bike, and do different things at a park with a group of his friends,” Samuels said.
Shortly after, his family got a call that the sixth grader had been in an accident.
“We ended up getting to the hospital, thinking that maybe he had an injury, only to find out that he had lost his life. And I think what made it even worse was the way he lost his life to a distracted driver,” Samuels said.
Samuels said the person behind the wheel was an 18-year-old who was texting and driving and was never prosecuted for her little brother’s death.
And although it’s been 18 years since E’arron died, her family is still grieving the moments they never got to have with him.
“You know, when I got married, when I had my two sons, they don’t know their uncle. They’ve only seen pictures of him,” Samuels said.
She went on to say she doesn’t know what it would be like to see him get married and have his own children.
“I always look over at Thanksgiving and wish he was there. I always wake up on Christmas morning and wish he was there,” Samuels said.
Samuels, her twin sister, and their mom are doing what they can to make sure no other family faces the same pain.
Shortly after he died, they started the E’arron James Haley Foundation.
They also stood alongside Florida legislators to help pass the current texting-while-driving ban in 2019.
And now they want to take it up a notch — advocating for a stricter hands-free law to ban holding a phone altogether while driving.
The state of Florida has seen distracted driving increase by more than 45% between 2021 and 2025.
Samuels said today there are even more distractions competing for our attention, so the law is needed more than ever.
“Speeding in the car while on TikTok, on Instagram, creating reels or videos — or even live streaming — there are so many reasons why we need this law to change,” Samuels said.
Until then, the foundation continues to spread awareness — giving out 12 scholarships annually for $1,200, representing the 12 years E’arron was alive, and making sure their brother’s legacy lives on internationally, starting an orphanage in his name in South Africa.
Current Florida law requires drivers to be hands-free when driving through work zones and school zones. However, bills to expand the law beyond those areas failed to move forward in this year’s legislative session.
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