Brooklyn Hit-and-Run Update: Julio Acevedo, suspect in fatal Brooklyn crash, waives extradition
(AP) ALLENTOWN, Pa. - Julio Acevedo, the man arrested in Pennsylvania in connection with a gruesome car crash that killed a pregnant woman and her husband on their way to a hospital, waived extradition Thursday and will be taken back to New York.
Acevedo, 44, surrendered to police in the parking lot of a Bethlehem convenience store on Wednesday and was later ordered held without bail overnight in Lehigh County Prison on a charge of being a fugitive.
Police in New York say Acevedo is wanted on a charge of leaving the scene of an accident. He is accused of speeding down a Brooklyn street at 60 mph early Sunday and crashing into a car carrying Nachman and Raizy Glauber, both 21, who died Sunday. Their premature son, delivered by cesarean section, died Monday.
Acevedo told Judge Kelly Banach he had finished the 11th grade, was unemployed and that he lives in Brooklyn with his mother. He wore an orange jump suit and was shackled at the ankles and wrists.
His surrender Wednesday evening was brokered by a friend who had been in touch with police earlier in the day. The friend met officers at New York's Grand Central Terminal and then led them to Acevedo in Bethlehem, about 80 miles away, police said. The friend had told police that Acevedo would surrender after consulting an attorney, but none was with him when he turned himself in, police said.
Acevedo told the Daily News that he was fleeing a gunman who was trying to shoot at him when his borrowed BMW slammed into a hired car carrying the couple. He told the newspaper he fled because he was worried he'd be killed. But police said there were no reports of shots fired in the area at the time of the wreck.
The couple belonged to a close-knit ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, which is home to the largest community of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside Israel, more than 250,000. They were members of the Satmar Hasidic sect. The couple's son was buried Monday near his parents' graves, according to a spokesman for the community. About a thousand community members turned out for the young couple's funeral a day earlier.