SALT LAKE CITY — Prosecutors say the driver in a speeding accident that killed an 18-year-old Rose Park man and critically injured a teenager lied about driving in order to avoid jail.
Julio Cesar Calderon, 23, of Midvale, had been drinking with friends at his mother-in-law's house in Rose Park when he drove his friends Antonia Amador Solares and Fabian Montelongo in his uncle's restored 1976 Chevy Caprice to show off the car, according to charges filed Tuesday in 3rd District Court.
He drove the car around a curve in the residential neighborhood going 50 mph on June 25, but Calderon missed the curve and instead hit a curb and crashed into a tree in a parking strip, shearing the tree in half, charges state. The car then vaulted through the air and crashed into a second tree. Solares died at the scene and Montelongo was hospitalized.
After the crash, Calderon's wife, her brother and mother arrived before police. Calderon's mother-in-law, Gregoria Solano-Alcantar, drove him to her nearby home where he took off his bloody clothes, washed them and took a shower, the charges state. When police arrived, Calderon's wife, Sandra Flores, and her brother, Baldomero Flores, told investigators that Solares had been driving the car, police say.
Solano-Alcantar later told police she hadn't seen her son-in-law in over a year. But when the woman's young daughter made reference to photographs of Calderon's injuries on her mother's cell phone, Solano-Alcantar admitted she had the photographs but had deleted them, the charges state.
Prosecutors say Calderon's wife later lied to police that her husband had been out of town when the accident occurred.
Calderon eventually admitted that he had been the driver and that he and his relatives told police he wasn't because "he had a family and he could not go to jail," the charges state.
Calderon was charged with automobile homicide, a second-degree felony, and obstructing justice, a third-degree felony. Sandra Flores, 21, and Solano-Alcantar, 40, were both charged with obstructing justice, a third-degree felony.
— Lana Groves