A Yonkers, N.Y., man was arrested on Wednesday for “intentionally” ramming a rental truck loaded with stolen cooking oil into a Maryland deputy who had tried to pull him over for erratic driving, according to the Harford County Sheriff’s Office.
Juan Yahir Quiroz Manzueta, 21, was arrested at an apartment in New Rochelle, N.Y., just before 8 a.m. on Wednesday, after a night of searching and surveillance in partnership with New York State law enforcement, Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler told reporters at a press conference.
Manzueta was charged, for starters, with attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault and second-degree assault on a law enforcement officer, Gahler said. He will be extradited back to Maryland and tried there “for this heinous act that injured our deputy, and the crimes associated with it.”
Those alleged crimes began unfolding at around 11:25 a.m. Tuesday, when Lieutenant Robert Burgess noticed a rental truck driving erratically. He tried to pull it over but the driver took off, crashing into a mail truck and then a passenger vehicle.
No one was injured, but the truck clearly posed “a significant threat to human life and our community,” Gahler said.
Manzueta then fled onto I-95, careening across the north and southbound lanes. Burgess was outside his car placing stop sticks to close the highway when “he was intentionally struck by the driver of the truck” after it rammed a tractor-trailer and another vehicle, also on purpose and with no injuries.
“These were intentional acts by a criminal attempting to elude arrests, and there will be charges on each one of these assaults,” Gahler noted.
The highway was closed for hours in both directions at exit 85 in Aberdeen during the incident.
Troopers finally forced the truck off the road to discover the driver was gone. Detectives determined the truck was full of cooking oil that had been illegally pumped out of a tank at an Aberdeen Applebee’s and was intended for illicit sale.
According to Gahler, there’s a high demand for cooking oil on the black market, as it can be used in a number of ways, including the production of biodiesel, animal feed, soaps and detergents.
After the ditching the truck and the cooking oil inside, Manzueta called a friend to pick him up and drive him back to New York, where he was later located, Gahler said.
Burgess was meanwhile hospitalized in a shock and trauma ward, but was receiving good care.
“He is very lucky to be alive,” Gahler said Wednesday. “He’s going to have a very long road to recovery, but I’m encouraged by his good spirits, his family support around him, all things considered.”
