NEW YORK (CNN) — The suspect wanted in connection with the hit-and-run crash that killed a Brooklyn couple and their unborn child this week turned himself in to authorities in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, New York police said.
Julio Acevedo, 44, was arrested after a friend helped facilitate his surrender in the crowded parking lot of a mini mart in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, said Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne of the New York Police Department.
The friend, Derrick Hamilton, traveled with detectives and a deputy U.S. marshal to the site. Acevedo was given a description of unmarked police cars to look for when surrendering, Browne said.
Police said Acevedo was cooperative and was taken to a Pennsylvania State Police barracks to await extradition proceedings. He was arrested at 5:10 p.m.
Video of the surrender, shot by CNN affiliates WFMZ and WABC and posted on their websites, showed Acevedo in a light blue hooded sweatshirt, his hands uncuffed, being helped out of a gray sedan and put into a silver SUV.
Hamilton helped arrange for Acevedo to speak to reporters by phone Tuesday. During that call, Acevedo said he was trying to get away from someone shooting at him when he crashed, according to WABC.
Police say Acevedo was going about 60 miles per hour early Sunday when the BMW he was driving crashed into the side of a livery cab carrying Nathan and Raizy Glauber, both 21. Raizy Glauber was pregnant; she and her husband were going to the hospital because she wasn’t feeling well, said her cousin, Sarah Gluck.
The couple’s baby boy was delivered by cesarean section from his dead mother’s womb but died the next day, police said.
The driver of the cab survived.
The front of the BMW was smashed but the black Toyota Camry cab was left a mangled wreck. The driver’s side was crushed, the front wheel was hanging off, and pieces of metal were bent in every direction.
Police say Acevedo fled the scene on foot. It wasn’t immediately clear how police identified him as the suspect. Authorities arrested the BMW’s registered owner Monday on insurance fraud charges, Browne said.
The fatal crash brought heartache to the Glaubers’ Hasidic community in Brooklyn, many of whom mourned the couple’s deaths at a funeral service on Sunday.
The young Orthodox Jewish couple were “preparing for the most joyous moment in life, to become parents, ready to build a castle to the future and build a family,” Isaac Abraham, a community leader and neighbor of the couple, told WABC.
Cab driver Pedro Nuñez Delacruz told WABC he didn’t find out what happened to the Glaubers until he got into the ambulance.
“I feel very sorry for that beautiful family,” he said.
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