Suspected DUI driver in crash that killed 2 was fleeing hit-and-run, prosecutor says
A DUI suspect accused in a wrong-way crash that killed two people near Boulder City Saturday was fleeing a hit-and-run crash he’d been in moments before the fatal impact, according to a Clark County prosecutor.
Boulder City Justice of the Peace Victor Miller on Tuesday set bail for Martin Raymond Andino at $500,000.
Appearing on video from the Clark County Detention Center, the 37-year-old suspect placed his hands on his face and appeared to sob as a prosecutor and his public defender relayed information from his Nevada Highway Patrol arrest report.
Andino was jailed on 18 counts, including DUI and reckless driving with death or substantial bodily harm, and child abuse because his two young children were with him at the time of the collision, records show.
The children were quickly released from a hospital where they had been taken for minor cuts and bruising, said attorney Shannon Phenix, who represented Andino.
The fatal crash was reported Saturday afternoon on Interstate 11 near Boulder City.
At 2:15 p.m., a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper heard from state police dispatch about a wrong way vehicle, a blue Ford F-250 pickup truck, headed north on Interstate 11, according to an NHP arrest report released Thursday.
The driver of a blue Jeep Wrangler reported that earlier, on State Route 172, the pickup failed to drive in the marked lanes and struck the right front of the Jeep before fleeing the scene, the NHP said in the report.
The Jeep driver followed the pickup to a Chevron gas station, where the pickup failed to stop and then entered U.S. 93 heading south, according to the report.
The motorist continued to tail the F-250 until the pickup turned onto I-11 and drove northbound in the southbound lanes, based on the report.
The pickup then collided head-on with a gray Toyota Tacoma, resulting the deaths of two people and three dogs inside the Tacoma, according to the report.
Virginia Whiting, 19, and Antonio Aguilera, 21, were driving south in a Toyota Tacoma when a Ford F-250 struck them head-on, the Highway Patrol wrote in a news release.
The victims, both residents in the Phoenix-Glendale area, died at the scene.
The children in the F-250 pickup are ages 4 and 3, according to the NHP.
Andino’s speech was slurred and his breath smelled of alcohol when he spoke to an NHP trooper, who stated in the arrest report that Andino, who said he had been drinking Beat Box alcoholic beverages, failed four field sobriety tests.
Phenix and Waters said blood samples taken from Andino came back with alcohol levels at 0.118 and 0.119, which is over Nevada’s legal limit of 0.08.
“Nobody is denying that this is horrific,” Phenix said about the crash. However, she said the allegations in the arrest report weren’t “clear cut.”
The attorney described Andino as a professional vehicle mechanic who is enrolled in aviation mechanic school.
Miller denied Phenix’s request to set bail at $100,000.
Waters said Andino had had previous arrests for DUI, domestic battery, reckless driving and evading law enforcement officers.
Andino is next due in court on June 15.
Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com.
Review-Journal staff writer Jeff Burbank contributed to this report.
