A 21-year-old New York man has been arrested and will be charged with attempted murder for striking a Harford County sheriff’s deputy with a rental truck full of apparently stolen cooking oil during a police pursuit in Aberdeen on Tuesday.
Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said investigators tracked Juan Yahir Quiroz Manzueta of Yonkers, New York, to an apartment in New Rochelle, New York, where he was arrested Wednesday morning by U.S. Marshals.
Manzueta will be charged in Harford County with second-degree attempted murder, first-degree assault and second-degree assault on a law enforcement officer.
Gahler said cameras captured Manzueta striking Lt. Robert Burgess with a Penske rental truck during a pursuit on I-95.
“We have hundreds of cameras we are reviewing, but from what we have viewed so far, it is clear [Manzueta] was operating the vehicle in this manner that posed a significant threat to human life and our community,” Gahler said.
Investigators identified Manzueta late Tuesday using fingerprints from the Penske truck, GPS data and the rental agreement supplied by Penske, as well as reconstruction of a damaged cellphone found in the truck.
Gahler said Manzueta bailed out of the truck on I-95 and called a woman from New York to pick him up at the Delaware Travel Plaza as police looked for him.
The woman is not expected to face charges since Gahler said investigators do not believe she was aware of Manzueta’s alleged criminal activity at the time. He said if investigators learn that she did know of the criminal activity, she would be charged.
Harford County States Attorney Alison Healey said Manzueta is pending extradition from New York. Once he is back in Harford County, he will have a bail review hearing.
Manzueta’s arrest stems from a police pursuit that began around 11:25 a.m. on Tuesday when Burgess observed a Penske truck driving erratically in Churchville. The truck fled after Burgess attempted a traffic stop.
Manzueta allegedly struck numerous other vehicles — not resulting in injuries — before hitting Burgess on I-95 while the deputy was out of his vehicle attempting to deploy stop sticks, sending him about 65 feet across the roadway, Gahler said.
“We use the word ‘crash,’ we use the word ‘accident,’ these were intentional acts by a criminal attempting to elude arrest and there will be charges on each one of these assaults,” Gahler said.
He said Manzueta will have an assault charge for each of the vehicles he hit during the pursuit.
After the pursuit ended with the truck going into the woods, police found a large container of used cooking oil in the back of the truck, which Gahler said was linked to a theft at the Aberdeen Applebee’s. Gahler said the theft was unknown to Burgess at the time of the pursuit.
“This isn’t going into Target and walking out with a 3 gallon jug of cooking oil,” Gahler said. “This is illegally pumping out tanks of used cooking oil into a large container in the back of a rental truck to be sold for profit.”
Gahler said Manzueta has allegedly used different variations of his name in other run-ins with police involving similar oil thefts in northern Virginia. He said because of the variation of names used, police are not sure of Manzueta’s exact criminal history.
Burgess is still in the hospital recovering from his injuries. Gahler met with the deputy Tuesday night and said he was “in good spirits” and that he is “lucky to be alive.”
“It is a miracle that we are here talking about a police officer who survived this,” Gahler said. “He is going to have a very long road to recovery, but I am encouraged by his good spirits, family support around him, all things considered.”
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