A roofing contractor is accused of drunken driving when he reportedly hit and killed a pedestrian in Maplewood and then continued on his way to work two hours away.
Jose R. Hernandez Pineda, 46, of Maplewood, faces two felony counts of vehicular homicide in connection with the Friday morning crash that killed Abdul Bakr Jafar, 31, of St. Paul.
By the time police caught up with Hernandez Pineda about seven hours after the crash, he was working with a roofing crew in the small southern Minnesota city of Sleepy Eye and smelled of alcohol, according to charges filed Monday. A preliminary breath test showed a .06 blood-alcohol content, just below the .08 limit to drive.
Police recovered surveillance video footage of the crash. At 4:29 a.m. Friday, Jafar was walking east in the middle of the westbound lane on the 2300 block of Maryland Avenue when he was hit head-on by a vehicle, the complaint said.
A newspaper courier in a vehicle came upon the aftermath shortly afterward and caught up to the suspect vehicle to record license plate information and other details, the complaint said.
The car was eventually tracked to the roofing site in Sleepy Eye, where it was found with heavy damage to its front. The foreman at the worksite told police that Hernandez Pineda mentioned something about there being deer by his house.
Jafar was one of several pedestrians who were fatally struck by vehicles over the last few days. Three other people on foot were hit and killed by vehicles in separate incidents this weekend in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
