The man enters 12 years in prison for leaving the scene of Pinellas’ deputy death

The judge cut off an emotionally charged criminal case that sparked a national controversy over immigration after 12 years of prison after escaping a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Deputy for 12 years on Tuesday in prison, sentenced to a former construction worker who admitted to fleeing him, causing him to flee.

Juan Molina Sales, an illegally-in-the-US immigrant from Honduras, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of the clash that killed Deputy Michael Hartwick last month.

“You ran away from what you did,” Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Pat Siracusa told Molina-Salles. “The dead are those who run to what you did. You did the exact opposite of what your adjutant would have done. You ran away because you were scared, and I need to punish you today.”

Molina-Salles, 34, cried and wept at the organization when she heard the Spanish translation of Tuesday’s testimony. Many of their law enforcement officers, spectators, each packed seven rows of court benches behind him.

The joint venture of construction company Archer Western-de Moya Group conducted scrutiny as it had employed Molina-Salles and some of his colleagues.

Molina-Salles used the fake name of Victor Vasquez. He and some of his colleagues are faced with federal accusations related to the use of fake identities.

Hartwick worked at Ofdutch on the evening of September 22, 2022, helping to direct traffic at the Gateway Highway construction site along Interstate 275 near Roosevelt Boulevard. He got out of his police car and stood near the shoulder of the road as Morina Sales ran at 20 mph with the front-end loader.

Molina-Salles continued driving.

One of his colleagues, Alan Gomez Zelaya, who was driving the truck behind the Loader, took the position of an eyewitness on Tuesday and testified through a Spanish interpreter. His voice trembled as he saw things on the road and remembered how he thought it was a garbage bag.

“I saw it, but I thought it was my body,” he said. “I stopped. I left. I saw my body not moving, so I didn’t touch it. It wasn’t alive.”

He spoke to Morina Sales over the phone and told him he was going to be attacked by police.

“He started crying in shock,” he said.

Molina-Salles met with another colleague who took his stiff hat and construction vest before taking off on foot. The overnight manhunt continued. The next morning, the deputy found him covered in mud and wet, hidden by a nearby brush.

State prosecutors performed the video from a body-covered camera that recorded CPL moments. Brian Hirschman responded to the call of a fellow aide in need of help.

In this footage, Hirschman was dashing over concrete barriers and the lanes of the interstate where the car was speeding. The pulsation of hard light from fire and emergency vehicles illuminated the ground where Hartwick lay face to face against the asphalt.

“I defeated the lieutenant,” Hirschmann told the radio. “We need to close this path.”

Hirschman pulled Hartwick’s gun from the holster before paramedics pointed him towards his back.

“I didn’t have a pulse,” someone said.

Li approached Hirschman during the fire. He whispered something. The aide began to sob quietly.

Barbara Newman, Hartwick’s mother, prosecutor in the first row of the courtroom, cried when the video played.

A photo on display in court shows a white tire measuring mark running across the back of Hartwick’s uniform shirt. His whole torso was crushed.

The loader weighed over 30,000 pounds.

Detective John Siers, who investigated the case as a murder, testified that Molina Sales spoke to him and another detective after her arrest. He said Molina Sales told him he had not noticed that he had been attacked by his lieutenant. Detectives who had experienced driving heavy equipment in the military did not believe him.

“It’s not rational to me to believe you bump into an object of the size of a human and not realising it,” Syers said.

Analysis of GPS data from video detectives and loaders from nearby semi-trucks showed that they had stopped driving for about two minutes after the collision. Meanwhile, he called Gomez Zelaya.

Prosecutors alleged that Molina Sales fled because he feared deportation. Border Patrol agents testified that about two years before the deputy’s death, he had been turned away while trying to enter the Texas country.

Assistant State Attorney Elizabeth Constantine said Molina Sales’ actions reflected a lack of respect for the law.

“The defendant in this case did not express any concern to anyone there that night.

This defense presented testimony from his family, spoken by videoconference from Spain. They described a hardworking man who grew up in a working class neighborhood in Honduras. He dropped out in his second year of high school and began working part-time in Construction, a trade he learned from his father.

He has a wife, a daughter and a son. He left his home country about ten months ago, before he was in trouble when the economy got worse. He worked with his brothers in Tennessee to work on construction and sent money to his family in Honduras.

He worked at Archer Western for about three months.

Gomez-Zelaya and another colleague, Laura Caudill, said the flashing light above the lieutenant’s patrol cruiser was hard to see. Hartwick was in full uniform, but not wearing a reflective safety vest, making it difficult to see him at construction sites, witnesses testified.

Hirschman said the agency’s policy does not require agents to wear vests unless they direct traffic.

His sister, Juana Morina Sales, said her brother called her within a day of her arrest. She later spoke with him regularly over the phone.

When she spoke to him, she was asked how her brother was emotional.

“It was destroyed,” she said.

Molina-Salles chose to have a judge decide sentence after an effort to negotiate a deal with the state. He pleaded guilty last month to the understanding that the biggest penalty he could receive in prison would not exceed 20 years. State prosecutors opposed the sentence limit and sought a sentence of up to 30 years.

While not allowing him to do so, the defense attorney highlighted the accidental nature of the conflict and the lack of knowledge about the possible consequences.

They sought a four-year minimum mandatory penalty and a sentence for a period of 10 years proposed by state guidelines.

“There’s no controversy that this is a terrible, tragic accident,” said assistant defender Maria Deliberato. “But if he turned around and came back, he wouldn’t have been charged with the crime.”

Before he was sentenced, Morina Sales stood and read from the prepared statement.

“It’s very unfortunate that we’ve left the accident scene where Deputy Hartwick died,” he said. “I was afraid, not because I was afraid of being deported, but because I was afraid that no one would believe me or that it was an accident. I needed time to think and pray, so I ran and hid. …I know I should have waited for the wrong thing to leave, and I want to be able to get it back.”

After he is released from prison, Molina Sales is deported. He said he wouldn’t come back.