{"id":43376,"date":"2025-11-24T18:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T18:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/43376\/"},"modified":"2025-11-24T18:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T18:42:08","slug":"verdict-in-murder-trial-of-philadelphia-police-sergeant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/43376\/","title":{"rendered":"Verdict in murder trial of Philadelphia Police Sergeant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">A third man, 23-year-old Alexander Batista-Polanco, pleaded guilty days before the trial began last week and testified as the prosecution\u2019s star witness.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Police said the group fatally shot 50-year-old Mendez when he and his partner tried to stop a car break-in at the airport. Mendez\u2019s partner was injured.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Authorities also said a fourth man, Jesus Herman Madera Duran, was part of the group and died after being struck by gunfire.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Defense attorneys argued prosecutors failed to prove the group was at the scene and noted the absence of surveillance cameras.\n  <\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Prosecutors presented cell phone and DNA evidence they said placed the defendants at the location.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">Martinez-Fernandez and Pena-Fernande are expected to be sentenced later Monday. They both face life sentences.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A third man, 23-year-old Alexander Batista-Polanco, pleaded guilty days before the trial began last week and testified as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2153,69,71,70,595],"class_list":["post-43376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-6abc","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-police-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43376","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=43376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}