PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia police on Wednesday announced two additional arrests in the case of the Oct. 12 killing of Officer Richard Mendez and shooting of Officer Raul Ortiz, bringing the total number of arrests to three.
Interim Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Stanford said Alexander Batista-Polanco, 21, of Camden, New Jersey, and Hendrick Peña-Fernández, 21, of Pennsauken, New Jersey, are now in custody.
At a press conference Tuesday, police had previously announced the arrest of Yobranny Martinez-Fernández, 18, in New Jersey.
Mendez and Ortiz were investigating a car break-in when shots were fired. Investigators have yet to identify the man who pulled the trigger.
“We believe through the evidence that we recovered — that’s ballistics, that’s crime scene evidence — that one of the accomplices fired shots and one of those shots came from behind Officer Mendez and we believe struck Officer Mendez as well as Officer Ortiz and also one of the defendants that ended up deceased, Jesús Durán,” First Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said. “However I’m not not going to discuss all of the evidence in the case, because we are moving from the investigation stage to prosecution.”
Assistant District Attorney Joanna Pescatore says all three suspects have been charged with the murder of Mendez and the attempted murder of Ortiz.
According to Vanore, information that developed over the weekend put Martinez-Fernández at the scene at Philadelphia International Airport, where Ortiz was shot and Mendez was killed.
Martinez-Fernández was located at a hotel in Cherry Hill on Tuesday morning, where U.S. Marshals, along with the Philadelphia homicide division and New Jersey State Police, took him into custody, Vanore said. He was extradited, and on Wednesday morning he was brought to the homicide division in Philadelphia, where he's being processed for murder.
Between Monday and Tuesday, Vanore said, police developed Batista-Polanco and Peña-Fernández as additional suspects.
Batista-Polanco was found to have warrants in New Jersey, and Scranton. On Tuesday morning, U.S. Marshals took him into custody in New Jersey, and he was processed for charges in a separate New Jersey State Police investigation. On Wednesday morning, he was charged in Scranton with offenses related to a burglary.
The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office approved a warrant for Batista-Polanco in the Mendez case, and police say he will face charges for murder.
Police served a search warrant for Peña-Fernández at his home Wednesday morning, according to Vanore. He wasn't home, but police say they soon learned where he was, and New Jersey State Police and homicide investigators took him into custody. Vanore said Peña-Fernández was in custody in Belmar, New Jersey, and he would be extradited back to Philadelphia to face murder charges, as well.
With the three arrests, police say, they now have in custody everyone who they believe fled the scene that night, but the investigation continues.
“We are going to keep going,” Vanore said. “There are people that assisted these individuals. There’s people that tried to obstruct us from finding them, and we are going to make sure that, if charges are appropriate, that they are preferred on those individuals.”