Philly man drunkenly struck, killed 6-year-old while parking at Upper Darby bar, police say

Darin Forrest had left one bar and was angling his Lincoln Navigator into a parking spot in front of another when he killed a 6-year-old girl who was walking with her parents, police said.

“I’m still trying to figure out how the hell did I back up and not see that girl,” Forrest told officers in Upper Darby shortly after the crash in March. “I don’t make mistakes like that.”

Forrest, 53, surrendered to police in the Delaware County township Tuesday morning, more than two months after the incident, with his attorney in tow. He has been charged with homicide by vehicle, homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, and involuntary manslaughter, said Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood.

The Philadelphia resident was taken into custody after his arraignment and held on 10 percent of $1 million bail, court records show. His attorney, Joseph Silvestro, did not return a call for comment.

“In these cases, whenever people die, it’s a tragedy,” Chitwood said. “But when a child dies, a 6-year-old little girl dies, it hits home.”

Jennifer Portillo’s family had moved to the area from Honduras a few months earlier, Chitwood said. Five of them, including the girl’s aunt, uncle and cousins, were walking down Marshall Road just after 3 p.m. on March 1. Their path took them near Rudy’s Tavern about the same time that Forrest pulled his SUV into the lot.

Surveillance footage from a nearby business shows the vehicle pulling out of the lot and past the family as they began to cross the intersection of Marshall and Grace Road. As Jennifer ran ahead of the group, the Navigator suddenly and sharply reversed, striking her.

When officers arrived at the scene, Forrest was “fully cooperative,” according to Chitwood. He was not visibly intoxicated, but officers could smell alcohol on him, Chitwood said.

In the chaos of tending to the child, officers did not subject Forrest to a field sobriety test, he said. But Forrest consented to having his blood drawn and sent to a lab for analysis.

The results, which came back Friday, showed that Forrest had a blood alcohol level of 0.106 percent at the time of the crash, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

Officers took the girl to Delaware County Memorial Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. At the hospital, Forrest told detectives that he drank a beer at Rudy’s earlier in the day, then drove less than a mile to the Waterford Inn, where he ordered a “Bombay gin with lime,” according to his arrest affidavit.

When he returned to Rudy’s for another drink, he didn’t find a parking spot until after pulling onto Marshall Road, he told police. He then checked his mirrors and was backing up when he “heard something and people screaming,” according to the affidavit.

Investigators determined that Forrest was traveling between 15 and 22 mph at the time, which is “not an expected speed to see when parallel parking,” they said.

Officers later searched Forrest’s smartphone and found that he had sent a text shortly after the crash, telling its recipient that he hit a girl. He also said it “don’t look like she’s going to make it a sin and the cops is here and I’m [expletive] up," the affidavit states.

Forrest is tentatively scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing in Upper Darby on Monday.