The New York man accused of killing an entire Brooklyn family in a brutal hit-and-run crash last month leading to his arrest across state lines is defending himself while saying 'accidents happen.'
'Sure I played a part, I couldn't stop. Accidents happen,'
Julio Acevedo told WABC News in a jailhouse interview while being held without
bond on three counts of vehicular manslaughter in the March 3 crash.
Nachman and Raizel Glauber, as well as their infant son,
were killed as the 21-year-old couple rushed to deliver their baby at a
hospital. Their hired vehicle collided with Acavedo's on the streets of
Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Their son, delivered by cesarean section, died the next day
of extreme prematurity due to blunt-force injuries to his mother, who was seven
months pregnant and was thrown from the hired car, the city medical examiner's
office said. The couple were only married one year when the tragic accident
happened.
Acavedo fled the scene but turned himself in four days later
in Pennsylvania.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges, including speeding
at 70 MPH. He blames the couple's livery cab driver for running a stop sign,
leading to the crash.
'Let's ask the cab driver, why did he run the stop sign?' he
asked. 'He was in more of a rush than I was. He was rushing the woman to the
hospital.'
Acavedo previously told the Daily News that he was fleeing a
gunman trying to shoot at him when his borrowed BMW slammed into the Glaubers'
hired car.
He told the newspaper he fled because he was worried he
would be killed. But police said there were no reports of shots fired in the
area at the time of the wreck.
The Glaubers' driver, Pedro Nunez Delacruz, 32, has told
police that he doesn't remember anything after being knocked unconscious in the
wreck.
'I'm made out to be the monster in all this,' Acevedo told
ABC. 'I can't bring 'em back, it was an accident. I apologize deeply,' he said.Asked if he would have done anything different, he says he wouldn't have left the scene like he did.
'Now knowing what I'm going through, I would have stayed,'
he said. 'I was afraid of being treated unjustly, as I was in 1987.'
In that year he was charged with the murder of a man known
as the original ‘50 Cent,’ Kelvin Martin.
Local gangsters wanted Martin dead and so kidnapped Acavedo
and forced him to carry out the hit or they'd kill him and his family.
'He was my best friend at the time,' Acevedo said. 'I was
forced to kill him.'
Avacedo was sentenced to 20 years to life for Martin's death
before the Brooklyn District Attorney's office found evidence proving Avacedo's
claims to be true.
'They sat on the information until Acevedo got wind of it,'
his attorney Scott Brettschneider told ABC.
Avavedo was released after spending 10 years in prison.
'I don't trust the system, I don't believe in it. I've been
through it. I hope to be treated fairly, that's it,' he told ABC.
Just two weeks before the deadly crash in Williamsburg,
Acevedo was stopped by police for driving erratically and his blood alcohol
level was far above the legal level at .13.
He told police he had drunk just two beers at a baby shower
before he was pulled over. He was charged with a DWI but released the next day
without bail.
Isaac Abraham, a spokesman for the family's Orthodox Jewish
community, called Acevedo a 'coward' before his arrest and demanded he be
charged with three murders.
'We in the community are demanding that the prosecutor
charge the driver of BMW that caused the death of this couple and infant ...
with triple homicide,' Abraham said in a statement. 'This coward left the scene
of the accident not even bothering to check on the people of the other car.'
The couple belonged to a close-knit ultra-Orthodox Jewish
community in Brooklyn, which is home to the largest community of ultra-Orthodox
Jews outside Israel, more than 250,000. They were members of the Satmar Hasidic
sect.
Nachman Glauber, whose family founded a line of clothing for
Orthodox Jews, was studying at a rabbinical college. Raizy Glauber grew up in a
prominent rabbinical family.
The couple's son was buried near their graves, a community
spokesman said. About a thousand community members turned out for the couple's
funeral a day earlier.
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