This father won’t rest until his family gets justice in the hit-and-run death of his son

The father has always been an early riser, a holdover from serving 25 years in the Marines. But for nearly two years now, Frank Corona Sr. has often roused himself hours before the sun comes up, careful not to wake his wife of 32 years in their Virginia home.

He doesn’t set an alarm. He doesn’t need to. His body seems to instinctively wake at 2 a.m. — around the time when, nearly two years ago, his 24-year-old son lay dying outside a bar in Northeast Philadelphia.

It was November, and Jason Corona was in the city visiting family and celebrating a cousin’s return from military deployment when he intervened after a man began harassing his sister.

After exchanging some words, the man, whom the police later identified as Frederick Falcon, then 22, started to leave.

But then, witnesses said, he got in his car, crept slowly past the group before suddenly making a U-turn, and then drove fast toward Jason’s group as they waited for a ride. Jason was hit. Falcon’s car vanished into the night.

Jason’s mother, Jeanette, was staying with her sister nearby. She rushed to the scene moments before paramedics transported him to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital. Frank, who was home in Virginia when he got the call, hurried north, but before he could leave, he got the news that broke him. Jason, his youngest son, was gone.

The loss devastated the family, and ever since, the elder Corona has been on an agonizing mission for justice that he tends to in the silence of those quiet nights.

Sometimes, he drifts into his son’s old room. But always he opens up his computer and sends out the equivalent of a digital signal flare. He posts pictures and memories on social media, as well as pointed reminders to law enforcement officers, politicians, and the people of Philadelphia that 200 miles away, a father — a family — will not rest or be able to fully grieve until the person responsible for killing Jason answers for taking his young life.

After 18 months of waiting, Corona and his family have just one shot at justice: Falcon, who in previous court appearances did not deny hitting Jason, but said it was unintentional, goes to trial later this month. Should he be exonerated, there is no possibility of appeal for Jason’s family.

Let’s sit with that for a moment. One man, whose actions police and witnesses have said caused the death of another, could walk out of a courtroom, his whole life ahead of him. A family, shattered by his actions, will be forced to live the rest of their lives under the crushing weight of unrelenting grief.

Back in the predawn darkness of Jason’s old room, Corona keeps on churning out social media posts, most of which end with a hashtag that serves as both a plea and a promise: #JusticeForJasonCorona.

Even as they moved around the country while the elder Corona was in the military, family was the priority for Frank Sr. and his wife, Jeanette. Frank Jr., 31, was born in New York, Jason in California, and Sarah, 23, in Virginia.

They all had their own interests and talents, which the supportive parents encouraged. Jason’s was sports of all kinds, especially basketball, and technology and robotics, which led him to his studies in cybersecurity engineering.

“As a young kid, there were always computer parts in his room,” Corona recalled.

Jason had graduated from George Mason University six months before he was killed. He had rented an apartment he was only beginning to move a few boxes into.

Family and friends described Jason as smart and sweet, a likable young man with a compassionate demeanor and a contagious laugh that made him easy to be around.

“My sister raised three beautiful kids,” said Cynthia Cancel, Jason’s aunt and Jeanette’s sister, who moved out of the city shortly after the incident.

Jeanette was one of 15 siblings. The family has always been tight, especially the cousins. There were frequent calls and gatherings, and even as they followed different paths in their lives, there was always a collective effort to stay in touch. Celebrations. Cousins-only trips. Puerto Rico the year before Jason’s death. It was always a good, happy time. There was no reason to think the night Jason was killed would go any differently.

But then phones started ringing at an hour when news is rarely good, and the voices on the other end were frantic: Someone had deliberately hit Jason with their car, they said.

Jeanette, Cancel, and her husband, Omar Lopez, rushed to the 2700 block of Comly Road where Jason had been hit outside a bar called the Union Tap.

The scene was chaotic, Lopez and Cancel recalled, but even in the dizzying whirl of ambulance lights and police sirens, witnesses said someone had intentionally driven into the group and then taken off.

While paramedics tried to save Jason’s life, Cancel recalled, Jeanette called out to her son: “Jason, Mom’s here! Mom’s here! Wake up! Wake up!”

Two days later, Falcon turned himself in and was charged with multiple offenses, including third-degree murder.

It galled the family that while Falcon was able to spend Thanksgiving with his family after he posted bail, they were left to plan a memorial service.

“My son would never be home for Thanksgiving, for Christmas,” Corona said. “And yet, the person who was responsible for taking him from us was out living his life.”

If there was any solace in those early days, it was their belief that with Falcon’s arrest, he would at least face a day in court.

But then, during a February 2023 preliminary hearing, the judge dropped all but one of the charges. Falcon would only face leaving the scene of an accident involving a death. According to court transcripts, Falcon’s lawyers did not dispute that their client struck Jason. But the defense argued that Jason stepped into the roadway — a “tragic reaction of the decedent” was how the judge summed up the argument — and Falcon couldn’t avoid hitting him. It was counter to what police and eyewitness accounts and, Corona said, video evidence shown in court. (On Tuesday, one of Falcon’s lawyers declined to comment.)

When the assistant district attorney suggested that the defense was victim-blaming, the judge disagreed and said, “I think it’s advocacy at its finest, actually.”

The charges — including third-degree murder — were refiled, and a nonjury trial is scheduled for May 20.

Before his son’s death, Corona was a detective working criminal investigations with the sheriff’s department in Spotsylvania County, Va., about an hour north of Richmond. But he found it increasingly hard to focus on the needs of the victims he was asked to serve when he was still consumed with seeking justice for his own family.

“They deserve more than that,” he said of the loved ones of crime victims in Virginia. He now works as a background investigator for the department.

It’s only become a more desperate mission as Corona has begun to discover the national epidemic of traffic deaths — with few consequences for people who turn their cars into weapons.

One of the most troubling aspects of hit-and-run incidents in Philadelphia is that — because of delays and gaps in reporting them — no one seems to have an accurate sense of the scope of the problem. Both the Philadelphia Police Department and PennDot track the incidents, and experts say the latter’s numbers may more accurately reflect the frequency with which they occur.

In 2022, the year Jason was killed, there was an average of roughly one hit-and-run incident every 12 days, according to figures from PennDot. That was more than twice the fatalities of 2019. At least 128 people have died in hit-and-run crashes in Philadelphia from 2019 to 2023, per police data. Most fatal hit-and-runs are not solved, as is the case with most homicides in the city.

“I get that guns are the preferred weapon of choice for people that commit murder, but we cannot allow people to get away with murders that are committed by using a vehicle,” Corona told me when we talked.

Before we spoke, I followed some of Corona’s social media postings, commentary that moves between sadness and grief and frustration and anger, where he frequently tags public officials.

“It’s changed everything, and I mean everything,” he said of his son’s death. “There’s not a day that I don’t think about this. There’s not a day that I’m not sad or in pain. Life is over as you know it, and it’s for the worse.”

His wife and daughter can’t talk about Jason’s death. When Jeanette’s sister, Cynthia, reaches out, she doesn’t push, and she doesn’t ask questions. She simply reminds her sister that she is here for her.

Corona, however, cannot — will not — stop talking about his son, or the damage done when he was senselessly ripped from their lives.

“I try my best to be the best father, the best husband I can,” he said, pausing before going on.

“This is so hard. This is my baby boy. You know the deal: Parents shouldn’t bury their kids, but it happens. But this, this is like a dagger in your back. When you know that the only reason it’s happened is because of somebody else’s actions. It was senseless, it didn’t need to happen.”

He knows that no matter how much he wishes he could do what he’s done so many times for his children in the past, this isn’t something Dad can fix. He knows, too, that as painful as the judicial process continues to be, this is the only shot at justice he and his family have.

When I ask if he’s thought about what will come next if the verdict doesn’t go their way — if justice is denied this family in the face of what seems ample evidence that this targeted tragedy could have been avoided — Corona isn’t ready to go down that road.

He only knows that on this father’s watch, this will never be over. He will keep sharing his son’s story, and keep encouraging other victims to tell theirs until they are no longer invisible statistics.

“I’m asking for awareness,” Corona said. “Because it’s my belief that when people are watching, they’re more likely to do the right thing.”

Are you watching, Philly? Because we owe at least that to families like the Coronas.

Until there are consequences for hit-and-run drivers, fathers will keep on waking in the darkness to sit in silence with the memories of their loved ones, even as the sun comes up.