Three South Jersey men accused of fatal shooting of officer at Philly airport ordered held for trial

Three men accused of taking part in the fatal shooting of Philadelphia Police Officer Richard Mendez and injuring Officer Raul Ortiz during an attempted airport car theft were held for trial Wednesday on most charges, including murder, after a daylong preliminary court hearing.

Yobranny Martinez-Fernandez, 18, of Camden, will face charges of murder and related offenses for Mendez’s killing and attempted murder charges for the wounding of Ortiz, Municipal Court Judge David Shuter ruled after the hearing.

Alexander Batista-Polanco, 21, of Camden, and Hendrick Peña-Fernandez, 21, of Pennsauken, will face charges of second-degree murder of a law enforcement officer and related offenses for Mendez’s killing. The attempted-murder charge for shooting Ortiz was dropped for both men.

Prosecutors allege Martinez-Fernandez was the shooter and that the other two men did not shoot Mendez, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office said Thursday.

A robbery charge for all three men was also dropped.

A fourth suspect was shot during the incident and later pronounced dead.

The attorneys for the three defendants declined to comment after the hearing. All three suspects are in jail.

For more than four hours, prosecutors sparred with the men’s attorneys, saying video footage, social media posts, and cell phone records they presented proved the trio stole a Dodge Durango and then used that car days later to travel to a Philadelphia International Airport parking garage, where the two officers foiled another car theft, with Mendez fatally shot and Ortiz shot in his arm in the process.

The men then burned the stolen SUV in a parking lot in Cranbury, N.J., prosecutors said.

But attorneys for the three men argued that none of the hours’ worth of evidence presented showed their clients were at the airport at the time of the fatal shooting.

“At this level, there’s absolutely nothing that carries the commonwealth’s burden,” said Robert Gamburg, Peña-Fernandez’s attorney.

Throughout the hearing, Mendez’s daughter, Mia Carrero, consoled his wife, Alex Carrero, as they sat in the front row, feet away from the three defendants.

Police have said Mendez and Ortiz were about to start their shift at Philadelphia International Airport around 11 p.m. Oct. 12 when they heard glass breaking at the Terminal D parking lot and tried to stop what they suspected might be a car theft. When the officers arrived, they found the three men and a fourth man trying to break into a car, and at least one of the men began shooting at Mendez and Ortiz from behind.

Mendez was struck four times, police said. Ortiz was shot in the arm. Both were taken to area hospitals, where Mendez was pronounced dead.

An alleged coconspirator, Jesus Madera Duran, 18, of Camden, was also shot, police said. Authorities believe he was struck by the same person who shot Mendez and Ortiz.

Duran was picked up by the three men and driven to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was dropped off and later pronounced dead, police said. Prosecutors played video footage of the stolen Dodge Durango arriving at the emergency room area of the hospital minutes after the airport shooting and leaving a person on the pavement.

Authorities searched for the suspects for two days after the fatal shooting.

Prosecutors played a 911 call from the time of the shooting. The caller is heard saying he was shot in the arm, was an off-duty officer, and that he was in the garage.

“Two officers down,” the caller says.

As the recording played, Mendez’s daughter plugged her ears with her fingers, unable to listen.

Two travelers who were in the parking garage at the time of the shooting testified they heard loud noises that sounded like gunshots.

One witness, a woman who was looking for her car in the parking garage, remembers hearing someone yell “Drop your weapon,” before hearing a scuffle and then at least three gunshots before she ran for safety. She recalled seeing a black SUV speed away down toward the garage exit.

An agent from the FBI’s Philadelphia field office laid out cell phone records that prosecutors said showed numbers attributed to the three defendants were at multiple locations throughout the night, including the airport, the hospital where Duran was left, and the lot where the stolen car was ultimately burned.

This story has been updated. An earlier version reported that prosecutors had not identified the suspected shooter.