Driver was going 88 mph when he hit, killed Newton man, affidavit says
A 21-year-old driver accused of hitting and killing a Newton man south of downtown Wichita last month was going upward of 88 mph and never pressed the brake pedal, even after hitting the pedestrian and crashing into a parked car, an affidavit released in the case alleges.
21-year-old Martin Tovar-Tavares was arrested and charged with unintentional but reckless second-degree murder after hitting 55-year-old Tyrone Carter and a parked SUV near Topeka and Lincoln on March 11.
Carter, a Newton native, had been pushing a wheelchair while walking south on Topeka in the bike lane when a white Ford Focus hit him, a Wichita police detective detailed in the document.
After striking Carter, the vehicle continued down Topeka before hitting the back end of a parked black Ford Escape, pushing it 50 feet down the street before both vehicles came to a stop.
The driver didn’t brake, the detective wrote, according to data from the Focus event recorder. Five seconds before the car’s airbags deployed, about when the vehicle would have struck Carter, the vehicle was moving at 93 mph. At the moment of collision between the two cars, it was going 88 mph, and the driver still had not applied the car’s brakes, the affidavit described.
Carter was pronounced dead at the scene, while Tovar-Tavares was hospitalized for potentially broken ribs and a lacerated liver. As he was being loaded into the ambulance at the scene, he told paramedics that he had a beer, the court document said. Once at the hospital, Tovar-Tovares refused to consent to an impairment test. It was later granted via a search warrant; the test results are still pending.
Tovar-Tavares remained under police watch until his release from the hospital. He was then arrested and charged. His next appearance in court is scheduled for April 20.
