Police charge man in fatal Holly Hill hit-run (Daytona Beach News-Journal)

Police charge man in fatal Holly Hill hit-run
By LYDA LONGA
Staff Writer

An illegal immigrant from Honduras, here to make money to send to his family, was identified Thursday as the man killed in a hit-and-run over the weekend, Holly Hill police said.
Nolbin Ramiro Mencias Reyes and another man, whose identity is still unknown, were walking along Flomich Street early Sunday when both were struck by a pickup driven by 23-year-old Benjamin Anthony Burcham, police said.
Mencias Reyes, 26, died in the street and the man who was with him remains in intensive care at Halifax Health Medical Center in Daytona Beach.
Police learned that Mencias Reyes and his friend had been struck after a handful of motorists traveling along Flomich called 9-1-1, Holly Hill police Cmdr. Mark Barker said.
Both men were from Honduras and worked at various tree-trimming companies in the area, Holly Hill police said. Mencias Reyes was an illegal worker, Barker said. The immigration status of his companion is not clear because his identity is still unknown.
For two days after the incident, however, the only clue investigators had concerning Mencias Reyes' identity was a receipt for a money order that had been sent to Honduras.
Using that and photographs from the crime scene and the morgue, the Honduran embassy in Miami was able to locate Mencias Reyes' mother in the city of Guayape, in Olancho, Honduras. The mother was shown photographs of Mencias Reyes lying dead on the street and in the morgue, and she confirmed it was her son, Barker said.
Records show Mencias Reyes would have turned 27 on Monday, the day after he was killed.
"We have to repatriate the body back to Honduras, but we won't be able to do that until a physical identification is made," Barker said. "That means we'll have to identify him through either his fingerprints, or dental records."
That too will have to be done in Honduras with the help of the embassy because Mencias Reyes had no criminal record in the United States.
Burcham, who lives with his parents on Tuscaloosa Avenue in Holly Hill, told police he was heading west on Flomich about 1 a.m. Sunday. Though he told investigators he never saw the pedestrians, a police report states Burcham said he was scared "after hitting the victims."
The suspect, charged with fleeing the scene of an accident with death and fleeing the scene with serious bodily injury, did not return a telephone message Thursday.
When he spoke to investigators Wednesday, Burcham said he left the scene and drove to the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market on Flomich and Nova Road to check the damage to his Chevy truck. After that, he drove to the Deerwood apartments in Daytona Beach -- about five miles from the crash site -- and called his girlfriend and asked her to pick him up.
Before the girlfriend arrived in a taxi, though, Barker said Burcham told detectives that he slammed a rock into the front end of his truck to make it look as if he had been in a crash. The taxi then took the couple to the Hartford Avenue beach approach in Daytona Beach. They spent the night on the sand and in the morning, Burcham called the Volusia County Beach Patrol and reported his truck stolen, Barker said.
After investigators put out information about Burcham's pickup on Monday, a tipster spotted the vehicle at the Deerwood apartments and called police, Barker said.
While Barker said it seems as if Burcham actually panicked after the incident, "his actions afterward were reprehensible."
"Right now our hope is to get (Mencias Reyes') body back home," Barker said.
lyda.longa@news-jrnl.com