Antonio Bacoeles once asked Francis Hernandez how he managed to return to the streets after frequent arrests even though he was in the country illegally.
He said, “I don’t know; I’m just lucky.”
Hernandez now appears to be out of luck. He is charged with three counts of vehicular homicide in the deaths of three people in an Aurora automobile crash last Thursday. The 23-year-old also has become a symbol for politicians of the nation’s failure to adequately track and deport illegal immigrants with criminal records.
“It is horrible what happened with this guy,” said Bacoeles, who lives on Iola Street next door to the parents of Hernandez’s girlfriend, Brenda Aleman, 19.
Hernandez lived next door to Aleman and her family for two years or so before the couple got an apartment together about a year ago, said Wilber Solares, 27, another neighbor.
Hernandez and Aleman, who couldn’t be reached for comment, frequently returned to the block to visit her family. The couple has two young daughters, neighbors said.
Hernandez, who had been arrested 16 times, frequently on traffic charges, before the deadly accident, never seemed to have a job, neighbors said. When he lived on Iola Street, he was usually at home or driving the neighborhood.
When Aurora police arrested him for speeding March 25, he showed them a pay stub in his name from A & Z Metal Decking. But he had a driver’s license in the name Luis Armando Martin.
He was frequently behind the wheel of a black 2004 Chevrolet Suburban. Police say he was driving the sport utility vehicle erratically on South Havana Street when he plowed into Patricia Guntharp’s Mazda pickup Sept. 4.
The collision sent one vehicle through the front of a Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop, killing Marten Kudlis, 3; Guntharp, 49; and Debra Serecky, 51, the passenger in the Mazda.
How he managed to get the Suburban remains a mystery. The vehicle’s temporary plate is in the name of Elifonso Avelar, who lives at 2232 Iola St., the home of Brenda Aleman’s mother, Rosa Avelar. She said it is not her car, nor did she pay for it.
The vehicle identification number shows it is registered to Francis Hernandez, said Denver Sheriff Department Capt. Frank Gale.
Henry Block, Quality Mitsubishi’s president, says he has been bedeviled by callers who want to know why he sold a car to an illegal immigrant. “We didn’t,” he said.
Quality Mitsubishi sold the Suburban on July 11 to someone other than Hernandez or Avelar, he said. The law bars him from naming the buyer, he said.
The dealer ran a credit check and contacted a bank. Everything pointed to a qualified buyer who was in the country legally.
“I have got this car deal in front of me. It is funded through a credit union. There is proof of employment and a driver’s license. The last name is not Hispanic.”
He couldn’t tell whether the picture on the driver’s license, in the name of a man in his 20s, was Hernandez.
The Littleton dealership bought the car through the Denver Auto auction July 2 from GMAC, Block said.
Quality sold it for almost $16,000. Block is in the dark about how Hernandez got it.
Bacoeles said Hernandez paid for the car but someone else went to the dealer and purchased it.
Hernandez’s arrest record shows that despite not having a license in his true identity, he has had no trouble getting cars.
When Aurora police clocked him at more than 60 mph on Colfax Avenue and stopped him March 25, he was driving a green 1996 two-door Honda Civic, said Aurora police spokesman Bob Friel. He was driving a brown 1993 Honda Accord when he was stopped another time.
