18-year-old charged with homicide by vehicle in Montgomery County
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Pa. - An 18-year-old in Montgomery County is accused of a heartless crime. The District Attorney says he hit and killed a man going nearly three times the speed limit and took off.
The suspect was just captured by U.S. Marshals in another state.
"You don't wanna talk – you don't have to talk. I'm just trying to get his side of the story, that's all," Keeley stated.
"I don't talk unless my parents are here," answered a Mendez family member.
No comment from the Mendez brothers at their home in the Flourtown section of Whitemarsh Township, just 1.8 miles from a memorial along West Valley Green Road, to mark the spot where 35-year-old Artemio de la Rosa Martinez was hit and killed, while he was blowing leaves on the winding road where the speed limit is just 25 miles an hour. It was just past three in the afternoon on November 8th.
The Montgomery County's district attorney charged 18-year-old Shakim Mendez with homicide by vehicle and more after U.S. Marshals captured him in Wilmington one week ago Thursday.
Charged with driving a Chevy Malibu that was so badly damaged in the crash that it could no longer be driven. FOX 29 News was on scene as it was taken away on a flatbed truck.
The force threw the victim's body 168 feet from the impact and knocked off his shoes, one found 36 feet up in a tree.
The DA says the evidence shows Mendez was driving the Malibu 70 miles an hour on the winding 25 mph road with "…the driver's seat reclined at a 49-degree angle, back beyond the pillar of the door and with dark tint down the windshield and a mount for an electronic device on the windshield near the steering wheel, combining to give the driver only seven inches of visible space out the windshield, significantly obstructing the driver's view."
The victim's brother witnessed the crash, the DA says and confronted the driver, asking, "Why did you run over my brother?"
Saying the driver replied, "It's your brother's fault, he was in the street."
After that the driver was seen talking on the phone as he left the scene on foot. The DA says Mendez called his brother Hector for a ride. The two were later stopped and arrested by Philadelphia police in Hector's red Chevy Impala on Germantown Avenue, where FOX 29 was on scene that night.
The DA says Shakim Mendez had removed his electronic ankle monitor in the car, placed on him for weapons and drug charges he was adjudicated a delinquent in a prior case. The GPS tracking of the ankle monitor put him at the scene of the deadly hit-and-run, the DA says.
No comment from the Mendez family Thursday night. Shakim Mendez or his lawyer will have to do some talking soon at his preliminary hearing, set for March 12th. 18-years-old and no longer charged as a juvenile now facing serious adult felony charges.
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