Bail-reform poster boy thrown in Rikers after latest arrest
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Pedro HernandezRichard Harbus
A teenage poster boy for bail reform who once spent more than a year on Rikers Island just landed back in a familiar place — the jail.
Over the weekend, teen trouble-magnet Pedro Hernandez was busted yet again, this time for reversing his car against traffic and blowing through several stop signs in a bid to evade Bronx cops, authorities said Sunday.
Hernandez — who became a cause célèbre of criminal-justice crusaders in 2016 after spending more than a year on Rikers Island while refusing to take a plea deal for a botched bodega robbery — was arrested Saturday morning for his alleged wild wheeling.
The dangerous driving began around 5 a.m. near Walnut Avenue and East 135th Street when cops spotted a man urinating at a bus stop, according to police.
As the cops closed in, the man jumped into Hernandez’s 2015 BMW M6, and Hernandez threw it in reverse into an intersection and sped off, authorities said.
The cops followed in their marked patrol car, repeatedly blaring their siren, but Hernandez breezed past at least three stop signs before finally ditching the BMW at East 138th Street and Jackson Avenue, officials allege.
Within an hour, Hernandez, 19, was then spotted again blowing through a red light on nearby St. Ann’s Avenue behind the wheel of a 2017 Infiniti G35x, police said.
This time he couldn’t get away and was pulled over and arrested on charges of reckless driving and operating a motor vehicle without a license.
Hernandez pleaded not guilty at his Sunday arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court, with the public defender assigned to the case saying that the teen is eager for yet another day in court.
“Mr. Hernandez denies these allegations. He spoke to his mother, and he had a different version of events,” said Yaniv Kot, of The Bronx Defenders. “He is looking forward to fighting these charges.”
Bail for Hernandez was set at $750 cash or $1,000 bond, which his mom was prepared to post.
But he was instead moved to familiar Rikers Island — because he had an open warrant for missing court on another reckless-driving case in Yonkers.
Kot insisted that the teen was only a no-show because his attorney in the Yonkers case mistakenly told him the wrong court date.
“He is someone who always comes back to court,” Kot said. “His family is always making sure he’s in court.
“There is no reason to think that he’s not going to come back to court.”
Hernandez has certainly had plenty of chances to prove his attendance record in court: Including Saturday’s bust, he’s been arrested at least 15 times in the five boroughs, or nearly once for every year he’s been alive.
He first made a name for himself in 2016, when he was charged with shooting a fellow teen in a botched hold-up at a Bronx bodega and then spent more than a year on Rikers Island in lieu of six-figure bail when he refused to take a plea deal.
The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights nonprofit eventually posted Hernandez’s $100,000 bail, and the charges against him were eventually dropped when a key witness refused to testify and allegations of misconduct were levied against two detectives on the case.
That saga led activists to hold up Hernandez as Exhibit A in their push for bail reform, but it was far from his only brush with the law.
A separate 2015 robbery case was dropped just last week after Hernandez made good on a deal with prosecutors to complete a semester in college.
In December 2018, Hernandez missed out on an opportunity to meet President Obamaat an RFK foundation gala when he was arrested for allegedly driving a stolen BMW in The Bronx without a license.
And in April, Hernandez was allegedly among a group that slashed a man in The Bronx while trying to rob him of his Gucci watch and gold chain, according to court filings.
Both the December and April cases are ongoing.
Asked about his client’s repeated runs afoul of the legal system, another Hernandez lawyer said the teen was a victim of shoddy police work.
“When someone has been falsely arrested as many times as Pedro and every case has been dismissed, it doesn’t seem to warrant the comment I make over and over again,” said the lawyer, Alex Spiro.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona and Aaron Feis
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