A judge has granted more time to children trying to serve paperwork on a Canadian snowbird whose SUV struck and killed their parents at a grocery store in The Villages.
Wilfred Maybee, 90, has thus far been unable to be found by process servers in connection with a lawsuit filed by the children of 83-year-old Edwin Mann and 84-year-old Marilyn Mann of Stonecrest who were killed in April 2022 when they were hit by Maybee’s SUV at Winn-Dixie in Spanish Springs.
Earlier this month, a judge in Lake County Court granted the Manns’ adult children an additional 120 days to try to find Maybee and serve him with the paperwork in connection with their lawsuit.
In December, a judge issued a summons for Maybee, who is believed to live in Collingwood, Ontario. Apparently unable to find him there, a process server with Venture Investigations & Service in Florida was assigned the task of trying to find Maybee here in Florida’s Friendliest Hometown. At the time of the crash, Maybee owned a home in the Rio Grande Villas which he purchased in 2010 for $159,000. He sold the courtyard villa in May 2022 for $279,129.
The process server went to Maybee’s former home in The Villages on Feb. 15 of this year. The villa was apparently being rented out by the new owner and the tenant informed the process server that Maybee no longer resides in the home. On March 14, the process server went to a home in the Village of Mira Mesa, owned by a woman also with the name Maybee. She informed the process server she had never heard of Wilfred Maybee.
In the lawsuit, family members claim that they incurred funeral and burial expenses, medical expenses and pain and suffering. In addition, one of the children “is 100 percent disabled” and relied on the parents as his caretaker.
They also claim that Maybee struck their parents “and continued to drive away until he lost control of his vehicle approximately 100 yards from the crash site and drove into a building.”
Maybee later offered a plea in absentia in Lake County Court to a charge of driving on an expired license (of less than six months.) He was fined $116 and ordered to pay $100 in prosecution costs, according to a plea agreement.
