Florida Highway Patrol Still Has No Name for the Santa-Suited Motorcyclist Who Hit 120 mph in Citrus County and Vanished

Florida Highway Patrol Tampa asked the public to call *FHP if anyone recognized Santa. The post went up December 22, 2024, with dashcam attached and a joke in the caption about the sleigh being in the shop. The rider in the red suit did not call. Through September 2026, troopers have not posted a name, an arrest, or a closed-case bulletin. The AEGIS Alliance is leaving this file open because a 120-mile-an-hour Christmas costume is still an unidentified subject, not a punchline that solved itself.

The night was Saturday, December 21, 2024, around 9 p.m. in Beverly Hills, Citrus County, near County Road 486 and Brandywine Terrace. A white motorcycle with blue trim was weaving through traffic. The rider wore a full Santa suit. A trooper clocked the bike at about 120 mph and tried to stop it. Dashcam shows the motorcycle threading cars, easing into a gas station as if the night might end with a ticket, then launching again. The second launch is the part that emptied the pursuit.

A pursuit that ended at a pump

Patrol Zone Media later cut the dashcam into a two-minute package with timestamps: the sprint to catch up, the pursuit call, the termination. FHP Tampa’s own social post is the official ask. The New York Post, Newsweek, People, and local Tampa patches all ran the same tape within 48 hours. That is how a Citrus County traffic stop becomes national odd news. It is also how a suspect gets a two-day head start while the internet argues about whether the beard was real.

Troopers described dangerous lane changes, not a parade float. A motorcycle at 120 mph on a county road at 9 p.m. is a lethality problem for everyone in the adjacent lane, costume or not. Florida already writes enough funeral copy off night pursuits. FHP’s decision to break off after the gas-station burst fits a policy a lot of agencies now print in training decks: if the only offense on the board is speed and the rider is willing to thread traffic, the chase itself can become the larger crime.

The gas-station pause is the detail that keeps the tape watchable. Most fleeing riders do not tap the brakes under canopy lights with a marked car behind them. This one did. Then the bike left. That pause is why every recap channel used the same three adjectives — brazen, festive, stupid — and why none of those adjectives produced an identity. A helmet, a beard, and a red jacket are camouflage if nobody writes down a plate.

Why the joke account did not close the case

FHP Tampa wrote the wanted post in Christmas voice because the agency knows how the internet works. Humor gets shares. Shares get eyes. Eyes sometimes get a brother-in-law who recognizes a swingarm. That method works when the rider is a local character with a known bike. It fails when the bike is generic white-and-blue and the rider never takes the helmet off on camera. No later FHP release reviewed by The AEGIS Alliance names a defendant or a recovered motorcycle.

Citrus County is not a media desert. Crystal River, Inverness, and the Beverly Hills retirement grid produce regular blotter items. A Santa suit on a sport bike is the kind of call every scanner group would have logged if a tow truck had dragged the machine into a sally port the next morning. Silence after twenty months is data. Either the rider is still unidentified, or the case was quietly filed as an unsuccessful stop and left to collect dust behind newer pursuits.

Florida’s other holiday-costumed chaos is not a defense. Mexico had a Santa and a Grinch fistfight over tips the same week. Texas had a mall crash that ended with a suspect shot. Those files are not this file. This file is a specific rider, a specific road, a specific agency asking for a phone call that apparently never came with a usable name.

What a 120 mph county-road run actually costs

Speed plus weaving is how motorcycles end up under trucks. It is also how unmarked civilians become witnesses with shattered glass. FHP’s posted tape is useful because it shows other headlights in the frame. This was not an empty test track. Anyone treating the chase as content should watch those other lamps before laughing at the hat.

Florida statute already makes fleeing and eluding its own offense, stacked on top of the original speed. If the rider is ever named, the costume will not be a mitigating story. It will be Exhibit A in a closing argument about consciousness of guilt. A person who stops at a gas station and then leaves again is a person who knew the car behind him was not a fan taking a photo.

The AEGIS Alliance files this on the Odd News and Crime News desks because odd and criminal are not opposites. A man who walked onto a wing at an Australian airport also thought the bit would stay a bit. The difference is that Melbourne police put a body in a cell. Citrus County still has a silhouette.

Readers who collect Florida spectacle can stack this next to the spring-break files and the long local accountability run on Lee County. Different counties. Same question: does an agency that asks the public for help ever come back to say what the help produced. FHP has not, on this Santa.

The open line on *FHP

The number is still *347. The bike was white with blue trim. The suit was complete enough that every national desk used the word Santa without a qualifier. The date was December 21, 2024. The place was Beverly Hills in Citrus County, not the California city that steals the Google result. Anyone who sold, stored, or photographed that motorcycle in the last week of December 2024 still has a reason to call.

Newsrooms love a holiday chase because it packages itself. The package is the problem. Once the joke lands, follow-up feels like killing the bit. The AEGIS Alliance is not in the bit business. A rider who took a marked car to 120 mph and vanished is a wanted subject until the agency says otherwise. Joke captions do not dismiss a case. They just make it easier for the subject to assume nobody is still looking.

The images stay on this page because they are FHP’s own record, not a studio recreation. The embed stays because it is the dashcam with the least commentary sitting on top of the facts. If a later bulletin names the rider, this file will carry the name. Until then the honest headline is the one the troopers already wrote and never cashed: anyone who recognizes ol’ St. Nick should call.

No arrest bulletin had closed the Citrus County Santa chase as of September 2026. The suit worked. That is not charming. That is a gap in a pursuit log.