The slow moan of traffic in Court Square was briefly drowned out on Tuesday when a crush of demonstrators rallied on behalf of a teenager who was fatally struck by a motorist on the outskirts of Liberty two weeks ago.
This pop-up protest raised quite a stir that afternoon with its demands of “justice” for Daniela Trejo Mendiola, who death on August 20 had become a real cause célèbre for many Latinos in Alamance County.
Aside from their grief over the 17-year-old’s untimely fate, the participants in Tuesday’s demonstration were also exasperated by the lack of criminal charges which, at that point, had met the 38-year-old driver who ended her life. Trejo’s supporters channeled their pent-up frustrations over this apparent miscarriage of justice into a boisterous chorus of “lock him up” that ricocheted across Court Square on Tuesday.
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The pleas of these protestors were apparently answered on Wednesday, when the N.C. Highway Patrol, which had previously been reticent to file criminal charges, formally lodged a felony charge against Josh Thomas Brown for his alleged role in Trejo’s demise.
According to an arrest warrant that the state agency filed that afternoon, the 38-year-old white male, who hails from 8963-B Pleasant Hill Church Road in Liberty, had failed to remain at the scene of the accident until he received the all-clear to do so from law enforcement. Although Brown did return ahead of the state trooper who was sent to the site, his previous departure compelled the highway patrol to charge him with one count of felony-level hit-and run, resulting in serious injury and death.
Later that day, the highway patrol issued a news release that credited “newfound information” for the agency’s about-face on the decision to file criminal charges. The news release added that Brown “voluntarily” went to the county jail to turn himself in at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday and was charged with a “window tint violation” in addition to the aforementioned felony. According to the news release, Brown has been placed under a secured bond of $50,000.
Brown’s arrest for felony hit-and run was still more than a day away when Trejo’s supporters were pounding the proverbial pavement on Tuesday afternoon. But even then, the wheels of justice seem to have started to move for the deceased teenager and her well-wishers.
Shortly after Tuesday’s demonstration, Brian Martin, a state trooper with the N.C. Highway Patrol, told The Alamance News that his agency had just met with prosecutors about this case, which his agency had initially investigated without filing any charges against the driver.
“We just met with the D.A.’s office at 2 p.m. today,” he informed the newspaper that afternoon. “After that meeting, everything we had we turned over to the D.A.’s office, and they’ll determine whether to pursue charges.”
The highway patrol’s aforementioned news release also alluded to this interagency confab, where the agency’s collision reconstruction unit reportedly presented the D.A.’s office with the “newfound information” that resulted in Brown’s arrest on Wednesday.
Martin was quite frugal with details about the collision when he spoke to the newspaper’s reporter on Tuesday. The state trooper acknowledged that his agency had initially received a call about the pedestrian fatality at 9:45 p.m. on Tuesday, August 20. He also pinned down the site of the accident as Oak Grove Church Road – a state-maintained route in southern Alamance County.
The highway patrol’s subsequent warrant fills in many of the particulars that Martin had kept close to the vest during his conversation with The Alamance News. According to the text of the warrant, state trooper A.J. Lynch reached the scene of the accident at about 10:10 p.m. to find Brown waiting there with a vehicle that wasn’t involved in the collision. The narrative goes on to identify the original vehicle as a “Volkswagon [stet] passenger car,” which had been heading north on Oak Grove Church Road when it struck a pedestrian.
“The Volkswagon passenger car then turned around and left the scene,” the arrest warrant goes on to recount. “Approximately 15 minutes later, the driver (Joshua Thomas Brown) arrived back at the scene in…the passenger seat [of] a different vehicle.
“Once Trooper Lynch arrived on scene and questioned the driver,” the warrant continues, “[Brown] stated that he thought that he hit a deer. [He] then drove the vehicle to his parents’ house…assessed the damages on the vehicle and decided to get his parents to drive him back to the scene because the damage did not appear to be from a deer.”
The highway patrol had previously offered a somewhat sanitized account of this accident when it issued a news release in the immediate aftermath of the accident. According to this pithy communiqué, Trejo had been “traveling as a pedestrian in the middle of the roadway” when she collided with Brown’s 2011 Volkswagen. The news release adds that “Brown was unable to avoid the pedestrian” who “died on-scene,” before it declares that “Brown will not face charges” for the collision.
The state agency’s subsequent accounts of the accident have confirmed some of the information that has been circulating in news outlets and on social media since Trejo’s death. It also dispels some of apocryphal claims about the accident, including a rather persistent canard that the office of Alamance County’s sheriff had initially handled this investigation rather than the N.C. Highway Patrol.
Other oft-cited assertions remain up in the air. These include an understanding which prevailed among the participants in Tuesday’s demonstration that the driver who struck Trejo is the son of a former state trooper. This particular claim seems to have been a source of some interest to Alamance County’s district attorney Sean Boone.
When contacted following his meeting on Tuesday with the highway patrol’s representatives, Boone acknowledged that he was “still waiting to get some information” before proceeding any further with his own investigation. He went on to make an oblique admission about one outstanding item when The Alamance News asked him directly about the rumors of Brown’s familial relationship with a former state trooper.
“If you find that out,” he said, “let me know.”
