Opening statements were read Wednesday in the trial of two men charged with killing a Philadelphia police sergeant at the airport in 2023.
Prosecutors say Yobranny Martinez-Fernandez and Hendrick Pena-Martinez were caught breaking into cars when they opened fire on Sgt. Richard Mendez and Officer Raul Ortiz. Mendez would later die from his injuries.
Jury selection wrapped up on Wednesday morning.
Assistant District Attorney Cydney Pope asked jurors to remember back to the night of Oct. 12, 2023.
The Philadelphia Phillies had just played a critical playoff game, but at the airport, a tragedy was unfolding.
Mendez and Ortiz were walking into work for their shift at the airport and stumbling upon what prosecutors described as a crew of car thieves from Camden, New Jersey, who used the airport parking garages as their “hunting grounds” for high-performance cars.
Mendez and Ortiz, as well as one of the four suspected car thieves, were shot following a brief struggle, according to investigators.
Prosecutors say Mendez died in the parking garage after he was shot as many as three times.
Ortiz was treated for a single gunshot wound to the arm.
Martinez-Fernandez allegedly pulled the trigger, and prosecutors allege that Pena-Fernandez was the getaway driver. The defendants allegedly dropped off their wounded accomplice at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he died.
The car was later found torched in Cranbury, New Jersey.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel was in court, and so were family members of other fallen Philadelphia police officers who have gone through a trial just like this one to support Mendez’s family.
In their opening statements, defense attorneys told jurors the shooting was not captured on any camera, and that evidence showing cell phone locations and usage doesn’t definitively mean their clients were the ones using the devices at the time.
But prosecutors also have DNA evidence.
A man named Alexander Battista-Polanco, originally a defendant in the case, pleaded guilty on Friday, and is expected to tell his version of the events that night from the witness stand, possibly later this week.
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