News Suspect in Fatal Crash Arrives in Brooklyn to Face Charges

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Suspect in Fatal Crash Arrives in Brooklyn to Face Charges
Mar 8th 2013, 04:31

The suspect in a hit and run that killed a young pregnant woman, her husband and, later, their newborn son faces additional felony charges, the police said Thursday after he was returned to New York.

Julio Acevedo, left, who is accused of leaving the scene of an accident that killed a young couple and their son, was brought to Brooklyn on Thursday.

The suspect, Julio Acevedo, waived extradition at a brief Thursday morning hearing in Pennsylvania before a Lehigh County judge, and was later handed over to the New York police for the long drive to the 78th Precinct station house in Brooklyn.

After initially arresting Mr. Acevedo on felony charges of leaving the scene of the crash that killed the couple from Williamsburg, the police added more felony charges: three counts of criminally negligent homicide and one count of first-degree vehicular manslaughter. The fact that the couple's son, who was delivered premature immediately after the accident, died a day later allowed the police to add the charge of manslaughter in the first degree.

The police added the manslaughter charge because of the boy's death, but it was unclear whether that charge, more difficult to prove, would be maintained by the Brooklyn district attorney.

"The law is, if the baby is born prematurely and the only reason the baby is born is from his actions, and then dies, he caused the death of that child," said Arthur L. Aidala, a criminal defense lawyer and former assistant Brooklyn district attorney. "All it takes is a breath" from the baby for it to be considered a live birth.

As of Thursday evening, Mr. Acevedo was scheduled to return to court in Brooklyn to face charges of leaving the scene of a crash. The Brooklyn district attorney's office will decide if other charges are warranted as a result of the accident that killed the couple, Raizy and Nathan Glauber.

Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the office of the chief medical examiner, said late Thursday that the couple's child died of "extreme prematurity" because of "blunt force injuries" sustained by Ms. Glauber during the accident.

As Mr. Acevedo awaited arraignment late Thursday night, the other driver in the crash spoke publicly for the first time at a news conference arranged by a taxi drivers' trade association.

Pedro Nuñez Delacruz, a veteran cabdriver, said he had no recollection of the early Sunday morning crash that killed the Glaubers, both 21, who were in his car.

"Before the accident, there is nothing I can remember," he said.

The crash occurred just after midnight on Sunday on Kent Avenue as Mr. Delacruz turned from Wilson Street, which has a stop sign at the intersection.

"I know the area," Mr. Delacruz said. "I've worked in this area for 10 years. I do this five days a week. Of course I'm going to stop at a stop sign."

The police have said Mr. Acevedo, who did not have a stop sign or light, had been driving a borrowed BMW at "more than 60 miles per hour" when it slammed into the driver's side of the cab, owned by Mr. Delacruz.

Mr. Delacruz, a 32-year-old father of three whose wife is pregnant, said that the death of the family had devastated him. "I'm not good," he said in Spanish.

"There is nothing that he did wrong," Fernando Mateo, the founder of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said in a telephone call after the news conference. Mr. Mateo said Mr. Delacruz was in the process of formally transferring his car's paperwork to a new company, Brooklyn Car Service. On the day of the crash, that paperwork had yet to be processed, meaning the car should not have been sent to pick up passengers, the Taxi and Limousine Commission said.

Call logs from Brooklyn Car Service list several pickups by Mr. Delacruz for the company that night, but none after 11:04 p.m.

Mr. Delacruz said he did not pick the Glaubers up on the street, but he did not say what company sent him.

Mr. Acevedo, 44, who is unemployed and had a pending court date at the time of the crash on a drunken-driving arrest, told the judge at his extradition hearing in Pennsylvania that he lived with his mother in Brooklyn. He said his last job was maintaining vehicles for a bus company.

Scott Brettschneider, a lawyer retained by Mr. Acevedo on Wednesday, said it was up to the prosecution to provide evidence of criminal behavior behind the wheel if they sought to bring stiffer charges than leaving the scene of an accident causing injuries (or, in this case, deaths), a felony. "Other than a horrible accident, there has to be more than that," he said in a telephone interview before the arraignment.

Mr. Brettschneider said he had previously given legal advice to Mr. Acevedo during his time in prison. Mr. Acevedo, who has struggled with alcohol, has a history of serious crime and served more than eight years in prison for a 1987 killing.

The severity of the crash had led to calls — from many in the Orthodox Jewish community, to which the Glaubers belonged, and beyond — for the police and prosecutors to aggressively pursue the driver of the BMW.

Prosecutors with experience handling vehicular cases said proving criminality beyond leaving the scene would depend on a careful reconstruction of the crash and whether either driver violated posted signs, speed limits or other traffic regulations like texting or drunken driving.

"I think we have to see what the prosecution has," Mr. Brettschneider said. "They have to prove everything."

Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 8, 2013, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Crash Suspect Faces More Felony Counts.

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