{"id":282805,"date":"2018-08-22T06:06:23","date_gmt":"2018-08-21T20:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=282805"},"modified":"2018-08-22T06:06:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-21T20:06:23","slug":"man-hit-by-car-left-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/man-hit-by-car-left-to-die\/","title":{"rendered":"Man hit by car, left to die"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Esekiel Smith<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A man was pronounced dead over the weekend after being hit by a car and left for dead in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n

Social media outlets blew up over the weekend with posts about a man who was left for dead by the side of the road after being hit by a dark Mazda 3 that was being driven by an unknown driver. <\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Department of Public Safety identified the driver as 30-year-old Esekiel Smith, who has been detained at the Department of Corrections since Sunday, Aug. 19. <\/p>\n

Smith reportedly turned himself in to DPS at 6:50pm on Sunday, accompanied by his wife. Smith refused to be questioned but his wife allegedly told police that Smith had told her about hitting a pedestrian in Puerto Rico sometime after midnight and leaving the scene. <\/p>\n

On Sunday, at approximately 3:37am, DPS received a call reporting an auto-pedestrian incident adjacent to the Commonwealth Utility Corp.\/Best Sunshine power plant. Upon arriving at the scene, officers met with the caller who had reported the incident. <\/p>\n

According to the caller, he was heading north when he noticed a man lying on the ground. He immediately stopped to call the authorities. <\/p>\n

DPS reported that the victim had noticeable injuries, was unconscious, and was partially lying on the shoulder of the northbound outer lane. <\/p>\n

Medics arrived shortly after and rushed the victim to the Commonwealth Health Center where he was pronounced dead at 4:01am. <\/p>\n

According to DPS, further investigation uncovered that the victim had been involved in a disturbance earlier Saturday evening in San Vicente where he sustained injuries from an altercation with a family member and was rushed to CHC, together with the family member. The two had another altercation in the hospital and the victim left on foot at 1:44am on Sunday. <\/p>\n

Last Monday at 2:32pm, Superior Court Associate Judge Teresa Kim-Tenorio set Smith\u2019s bail at $100,000 for operating a vehicle without a valid driver\u2019s license, failure to exercise due care to a pedestrian, leaving the scene of an accident without rendering assistance, and homicide by vehicle. <\/p>\n

DPS public information officer Jackie Rae said the incident is the fourth fatal car accident this year. <\/p>\n

Last June, a female tourist who was walking with a friend on the shoulder of Beach Road in southern Garapan was injured when a vehicle mowed her down in an alleged attempt to rob her. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man was pronounced dead over the weekend after being hit by a car and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":282810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[162,35,405,90],"class_list":["post-282805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-car","tag-dps","tag-last-monday","tag-puerto-rico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}