WELLFLEET — Eight weeks after Police Chief Kevin LaRocco announced that his department had located the vehicle believed to be involved in the hit-and-run that killed 24-year-old Timothy Duval Jr. on May 24, no arrests have been made, and no suspects have been named. The police said in June that there were “person(s) of interest” whose name or names were being withheld.

LaRocco declined this week to answer questions about the investigation, saying that the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s office was in charge and had told him not to talk about the case.

“We are limited on what we can comment on,” said LaRocco, “in order to protect the integrity of an ongoing and open investigation, as well as complying with the District Attorney’s request to limit the amount of information released in order for them to successfully prosecute the case.”

But the D.A.’s office told the Independent that the Wellfleet police are leading the investigation. “That is being investigated by the Wellfleet Police Department,” wrote Danielle Whitney of the district attorney’s office in an email. “All inquiries need to be directed to them.”

Police and fire personnel found Duval late on Saturday evening of Memorial Day weekend lying on Ocean View Drive near the intersection of Long Pond Road, a short distance from the Beachcomber bar. First responders pronounced him dead, according to a May 25 police press release.

“The department remains committed to seeking justice for Timothy and his family,” the police said in a follow-up statement on May 26. Chief LaRocco said the department was “following several leads” and directed the public to submit tips to Det. Michael Allen.

The next statement came on June 23, when LaRocco said the police had identified the vehicle and that it was “being processed” by Wellfleet police, the Barnstable County sheriff’s office, and the Cape Cod Crash Reconstruction Team.

The vehicle, the statement said, matched an earlier description “based on the location of some of the injuries” Duval had suffered. Police described the vehicle as a “pickup truck or SUV with front-end damage.”

Since that June statement, local and state authorities have declined to answer questions or release any further information about the now nearly three-month-old crime. Leaving the scene of a fatal accident is a felony in Massachusetts, punishable by up to 10 years in state prison.

Duval, a resident of Tallahassee, Fla., served in the U.S. Army for four years while stationed at Fort Benning, Ga. before pursuing a career as an electrical lineman, according to an obituary published in the June 13 issue of Coastal Point, a Delaware newspaper. In 2020, he married Angeliki “Kiki” Lampadarios, with whom he had a three-year-old son. He is also survived by his father, siblings, grandparents, and step-family in Delaware and Maryland.

Friends of Duval said they were frustrated by the lack of progress in the case. Tyler Luszcz of Hampden, Mass., who accompanied him to the Beachcomber on May 24, said he had made repeated unsuccessful attempts to get information.

Duval met Luszcz at an electrical lineworker training program in Georgia. The two often stayed at Luszcz’s grandparents’ home in Truro with Gavin Holland, another friend. On the night of May 24, Luszcz said, the friends went to the Beachcomber to listen to music, and Duval was separated from the group, prompting them to report him missing to the police.

Given the amount of time since the identification of the vehicle, Luszcz said, he found the lack of information “absurd.”

The Death of Jeffrey Richardson

The Wellfleet police also declined this week to release any information about another apparent hit-and-run death in town in 2023, saying it, too, was under active investigation.

Melissa Richardson of Connecticut, the widow of Jeffrey Richardson, a retired music teacher who died on July 11, 2023 at Cape Cod Hospital after a “possible hit-and-run accident” on Route 6 the previous night, told the Independent this week that local and state police in Massachusetts “were not very helpful” in solving her husband’s case.

Richardson said that she waited months to receive a death certificate for her husband and obtained one only by driving back to the Cape herself. The initial medical examiner’s report she received listed Jeffrey’s cause of death as “undetermined,” she said.

She added that the authorities were not able to identify a vehicle involved in Jeffrey’s death and said they could not conclude whether the incident was, in fact, a hit-and-run.

The police were called at 9:41 p.m. on July 10, 2023 and found Richardson “lying unresponsive on Route 6 with visible severe head injuries.”

“They couldn’t figure out if a car hit him,” Melissa said this week.

But in a report issued just after the incident, the police said they were “specifically looking for any vehicle with damage to the passenger side, including the passenger side mirror.”

Melissa eventually received another medical examiner’s report that cited “blunt force injury to the head” as a cause of death but maintained that the manner of death was “undetermined,” she said.

Over two years later, she said, the case appeared to be “officially still open.”

Ultimately, Richardson decided she could not afford a private investigator and could not pursue further fact-finding. “The conclusion that I reached after a few months,” she said, “was that Cape Cod is the beloved vacation spot, and they don’t want bad press.”