SAN JOSE \u2014 Investigators have concluded that a driver who died after a November wreck lied when he claimed to be a carjacking victim, presumably to avoid liability for the hit-and-run crash, according to the San Jose Police Department.<\/p>\n
No driver was present when officers were called to the aftermath of a Nov. 22 evening collision in which a 1987 Toyota Odyssey RV hit several unoccupied parked cars on Summerside Drive about a block from Coyote Creek, police said.<\/p>\n
Two days later, traffic detectives were alerted to a report from a local hospital in which a man claimed that he owned the RV and lost it to a violent carjacker who inflicted \u201chead and chest injuries\u201d on him, police said.<\/p>\n
The man died Dec. 14. He has been identified by the Santa Clara County Medical Examiner-Coroner\u2019s Office as 65-year-old Daniel Martinez, and did not have a listed city of residence.<\/p>\n
Police said the coroner\u2019s office discovered evidence during its death investigation suggesting that the man was not a carjacking victim as he claimed. Evidence was submitted to the county Crime Lab \u2014 run by the district attorney\u2019s office \u2014 which confirmed last Thursday that matched the wreck site and indicated the man was driving the RV when it crashed, not his purported carjacker.<\/p>\n
As a result, the fatal crash is being classified as the 41st traffic death of 2025, police said.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information for investigators can contact SJPD Traffic Detective Rachel Bowen at 408-277-4654 or by email\u00a04461@sanjoseca.gov<\/a>. Tips can also be left with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or siliconvalleycrimestoppers.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2014 Investigators have concluded that a driver who died after a November wreck lied when he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[27058,8197,350,67186,236,45365,88,90,89,5569],"class_list":["post-130895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-carjacking","tag-collision","tag-crash","tag-false-report","tag-police","tag-rv","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-sjpd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}