SUPERIOR Court Presiding Judge Roberto C. Naraja has granted the request of the Office of the Attorney General’s criminal division to amend the criminal case against Andrei Camacho and to have it docketed in court as a traffic case.
Camacho, 18, was accused of fleeing the scene of an accident after crashing a pickup truck that he was driving and leaving three injured minors. One of the three passengers was a 17-year-old who was pronounced dead at the hospital. The two other passengers were 16 years old.
At an arraignment on Monday, Camacho appeared out of custody and was represented by Assistant Public Defender Emily Thomson who, on behalf of her client, entered a not guilty plea to the charges.
Assistant Attorney General Steve Kessel appeared for the government and informed the court about the prosecution’s intention to prosecute the case as a traffic case.
After hearing from the parties, Judge Naraja scheduled a status conference for Nov. 2 at 10 a.m.
And as the case is now a traffic case, the presiding judge reassigned it to Associate Judge Kenneth L. Govendo.
Camacho is charged with failure to maintain the right side of the highway, speeding, reckless driving, driving under the combination of drugs and alcohol, seatbelt violation, hit and run, failure to report an accident, homicide by vehicle, manslaughter, possession of a controlled substance, and refusal to submit to a blood draw.
The Department of Public Safety, in an official statement, stated that the cause of the crash on Aug. 14 at 12:08 a.m. was speed and driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
According to the complaint against Camacho, he was driving the truck at a speed of 100 miles per hour and was told multiple times to slow down but he refused, saying, “I know how to drive.”
Camacho admitted to the police that he was the driver of the crashed vehicle and that he consumed alcohol prior to the accident.
He said he assisted his companions out of the vehicle prior to fleeing the scene.
Camacho turned himself in to DPS around 4 p.m. on the same day.
Police found many opened cans of beer, an empty bottle of vodka, and a black pouch containing a Ziploc bag with green leafy substance, which later was tested positive for marijuana.
Police said the pickup truck had run off the paved road and came to rest in the ditch down the slope with an unconscious male individual in the rear passenger seat.
“Medics arrived at the scene and checked the occupant in the vehicle and found that he had no pulse and [was] not breathing. The occupant had a fractured face with his left eye socket pushed inwards, with a laceration on the back of his head and pool of blood running down his right arm,” police added.
