More than a year after a young man was killed in an apparent hit-and-run in Wellfleet, the case remains unsolved.
Public records recently obtained by the Provincetown Independent's Tyler Jager give us a look inside the investigation.
CAI's Gilda Geist spoke to Jager to learn more.
Gilda Geist Can you please remind us what happened with the hit-and-run back in May 2025?
Tyler Jager Late on the evening of May 24, 2025—and that was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend—paramedics and the fire department in Wellfleet found Timothy Duval Jr. dead near the intersection of Long Pond Road and Ocean View Drive in Wellfleet. He was visiting from Florida. He was separated from his friends earlier that night at the Beachcomber Bar, and the cause was an apparent hit-and-run, although no vehicle was found at the scene and no arrests or charges have been made in connection with the case since then. Timothy Duval Jr. was a 24-year-old Army veteran. He had lived in Florida and Delaware before he died, and he was a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union. He was there staying with a friend who was a fellow electrical lineman. And when he died, he also left his wife and a 3-year-old son behind.
GG Where does the case stand now?
TJ So, now the case remains open. The Cape and Islands District Attorney's Office and the Wellfleet Police still say the investigation is open. We learned from the district attorney's office that on September 8, District Attorney Robert Galibois filed a request for an inquest in the case, which is a somewhat unusual process in which a district court judge takes on an investigative role in the case rather than a sort of juridical role. They're looking at the circumstances of an unexplained death, and that inquest process is not public, although a judge's concluding report can be made public later at their discretion, and it can eventually result in charges.
GG What did you find in the public records you got ahold of for this story?
TJ We obtained five search warrants from Orleans District Court that had been completed and returned by the Wellfleet Police in connection with the case over the past two years. And the search warrants show that police already had leads on two pickup trucks that could have been involved in the case within five days of finding Timothy Duval dead on Ocean View Drive. Four of those search warrants later pertained to one of the trucks, a Chevrolet Colorado, that had been already turned into police by its owner. And that had actually been announced last year, that they had a vehicle thought to be involved in custody. And then another one of the warrants was returned much more recently, in April 2026. And that was a 1989 Ford F-150. And their request to search that truck was completed and returned 11 months after they were first notified that it might be connected to the case.
GG As you just mentioned, you identified some pretty large gaps between when police learned certain details and then when they sought out more information through interviews and search warrants. What did police say about why there were those seemingly large gaps?
TJ So just to mention the fifth search warrant—which had that large gap of 11 months in between when police were first notified of this potential vehicle being involved and when they issued a search warrant for it—it's not entirely explained in the warrant request, but it does say that in March 2026, the police in Wellfleet were notified by the district attorney's office that a medical examiner's report did suggest that it was possible for Duval to have been struck by more than one vehicle. That's something we've also reported that the father of Duval was told last year.
