DUI crash that happened July 19, 2025, in the city\u2019s South Side<\/a>, Northampton County District Attorney Stephen Baratta said.<\/p>\nMendez\u2019s vehicle hit a woman who was standing near a parked vehicle about 1:30 a.m. on East Fourth Street, the DA said. The woman, 24, was thrown in the air and landed on the street, and she suffered numerous serious injuries, including a traumatic brain injury. Two other parked vehicles also were damaged.<\/p>\n
Investigators viewed surveillance footage that showed Mendez\u2019s vehicle hit the women, then a parked car, before fleeing. The vehicle was found later that morning. Police spoke to Mendez and found out that he filed an insurance claim that morning, claiming that a vehicle sideswiped his car, according to the DA\u2019s office. While speaking to officers, Mendez showed obvious signs of impairment.<\/p>\n
A blood draw showed he had a blood-alcohol concentration of .126% hours after the crash, and that he likely had a BAC of between .17% and .27%, more than double the legal driving limit of .08%. Mendez told police he had been drinking at a nearby bar to celebrate his birthday.<\/p>\n
At the time of the incident, Mendez was listed in court documents as living less than a mile from where the crash happened.<\/p>\n
Mendez was found guilty in April on 12 charges, including aggravated assault while DUI.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Bethlehem man will spend several years in prison for a crashing into and seriously injuring a woman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,46,182,139,432],"class_list":["post-245058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-courts","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}