Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
The trial of three men accused of killing Philadelphia Police Officer Richard Mendez and injuring another officer during a shooting in an airport parking lot began Wednesday in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas. Yobranny Martinez-Fernandez and Hendrick Pena-Fernandez are charged with second-degree murder and robbery in the October 2023 crime. A third man, Alexander Batista-Polanco, faced similar charges but pleaded guilty to third-degree murder less than a week before the trial got underway. And a fourth, 18-year-old Jesus Herman Madera Duran, was accidentally shot by one of the suspects during the incident and died shortly after. Prosecutors say the men, all in their early twenties, were members of a multistate auto-theft ring that operated out of Camden and stole more than 40 vehicles from homes, parking garages, and car dealerships in recent years. Though the group was adept at a burgeoning method of auto theft that uses high-tech tools to reprogram new keyless fobs, prosecutors say the men were startled when Mendez and his partner, Raul Ortiz, approached them that day. Prosecutors said the officers had heard glass breaking and spotted the group as they were trying to steal a car. Martinez-Fernandez fired at the officers, prosecutors said, and Mendez, 50, was struck four times in the back and died shortly after at a nearby hospital. On Wednesday, dozens of police officers packed Judge Giovanni Campbell’s courtroom in support of the slain officer, a 22-year veteran who was posthumously promoted to sergeant. Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel was among them and later told reporters he believed prosecutors had a “strong case” against the two defendants. And he commended members of Mendez’s family for attending the trial and using their grief to support other law enforcement families who had lost loved ones. “I wish we weren’t here, but we are,” Bethel said, “and we get through this together.” Prosecutors will lay out a case that does not include video evidence or eyewitness accounts of the shooting. But Assistant District Attorney Cyndey Pope said cell tower data placed both men at multiple locations tied to the crime and its cover up, including the hospital where they dropped off the gravely injured Duran and the abandoned warehouse in central New Jersey where they torched the stolen vehicle that aided their escape. And Martinez-Fernandez’s DNA was found at various points across the scene, she said, including on a fired bullet shell. Pope centered her opening statement to the jury on the Camden man, telling jurors they would see an Instagram video of him flashing a gun taken earlier that evening as the crew made their way to the airport lot that doubled as a “hunting ground” for stealing cars. “This is not just a crew going on a run,” she said. “This is a business — and every business has security.” Defense attorneys Robert Gamburg and Earl G. Kauffman told the jury there were no witnesses who would say that their clients were responsible for the crime, and that they should be presumed innocent. In Pope’s telling, Mendez and Ortiz encountered the men around 11 p.m. in the Terminal D garage. Earlier that night, the group had stolen a 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee from Pattison Avenue near the Sports Complex as fans gathered to watch the Phillies in a consequential divisional series game. After dumping the vehicle in North Philadelphia, the men drove down I-95 to the airport, where they sought out a black Dodge Charger, Pope said. Martinez-Fernandez smashed the window and shimmied into the driver’s seat, where he waited for Duran to hand him the key fob programmer. The other men, she said, waited in a neighboring vehicle. Mendez approached Duran during that hand-off and a scuffle broke out, according to prosecutors. Martinez-Fernandez, still crouching beneath the steering wheel of the Charger, flung open the door and began shooting at the officers, they say. In addition to striking Mendez, the gunfire hit Ortiz once in the forearm. He survived his injuries. Duran, too, was struck by what Pope said was his friend’s reckless gunfire. “Instead of helping” Duran, Pope said, Martinez-Fernandez grabbed Mendez’s firearm for himself. The four men fled the scene, bashing their vehicle through the security gate and driving Duran to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she said they left the injured 18-year-old next to an ambulance. Pope said the group then drove to Cranberry, N.J., where they stayed over at a hotel and purchased the gasoline to burn the car. Prosecutors say two witnesses were heading to their vehicles in the airport garage overheard the gunfire, and that they will testify at the trial. The first witness, a man who called 911 to report the chaos, told the jury of the frantic moment he took refuge in his car, describing flashes from the gunfire illuminating the dim garage. The tightly packed, largely featureless parking lot is a challenging scene for a jury to visualize, according to Pope. So over the weekend members of her team recreated the crime scene, walking through with witnesses to retrace their steps and capturing the scene using drone footage. Those videos will be played in court over the coming days, Pope said.
