Mexico Arrests Fugitive in '03 Franklin DUI Crash

PRESS RELEASE
May 23, 2011
For Immediate Release
Contact: Bernie Weisenfeld- PIO
Phone: (856) 384-5617; Pager (856) 251-4736
Re.: Arrest of ’03 Franklin auto assault defendant in Mexico

Almost seven years after he disappeared, Juan Bautista (DOB 3/17/81), formerly of Bridgeton NJ, charged with critically injuring a Franklin Township NJ woman in a drunk driving crash, has been arrested in his native Mexico and will be tried there for the Franklin crimes he faces.

Bautista was charged with aggravated assault, assault by auto, driving while intoxicated, and without a license or insurance in connection with a Sept. 16, 2003 two-car collision on Delsea Drive that left Christina Applegate, then age 21, in a coma. Her condition remains unchanged today. Bautista was released from jail on $35,000 bail on Sept. 24, 2003. After his indictment, he failed to appear at a court hearing on the charges on June 4, 2004. A warrant was issued for his arrest.

The Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office was notified late last week that Bautista, who was an illegal alien living in Bridgeton at the time of the crash, was arrested Dec. 16, 2010 on a warrant issued in Mexico in November 2010. The warrant resulted from lengthy efforts by the GCPO fugitive unit to have all records related to the Bautista investigation translated into Spanish with the assistance of the California Department of Justice. The translated case file was then submitted to Mexican authorities.

In addition, Mexico required proof before seeking Bautista that he was a native of that country, and now-retired GCPO Sgt. Tim O’Brien obtained a videotaped statement to that effect from Bautista’s sister, who lives in Bridgeton. She confirmed she was present at her brother’s birth in the state of Puebla, Mexico.

The prosecution of Bautista will take place in Mexico because the crimes he is charged with are not covered by an extradition agreement. However, Mexican authorities now have all the proofs the GCPO and Franklin Township’s Police Department assembled on the crash.

“We believe Mexican prosecutors have all they need for a conviction of Juan Bautista on a crime equivalent to that which he committed here,” said Gloucester County Prosecutor Sean F. Dalton. “We have always assured Christina’s family that this man would not go free, even if, as we suspected would be the case, we had to reach across our borders to find him. Now we hope our neighboring nation’s justice system will hold him accountable.”

“It’s a case we’ve been working on for some time,” said Special Agent Val Jiminez of the California Attorney General’s Foreign Prosecution and Law Enforcement Unit, whose office assists other law enforcement agencies in the documentation work. Translation of a criminal file is “quite detailed,” typically involving 300 to 500 pages, including lab reports and diagrams, Jiminez said.

The final step was verification of Bautista’s citizenship, which was a challenge since he was born with a midwife assisting, not in a hospital, Jiminez said.

Bautista will be held without bail until his prosecution, the agent said.

At the urging of Applegate’s family and friends and the GCPO, the “America’s Most Wanted” television show broadcast a segment on Bautista in 2006. The report included a dramatization of Christina Applegate’s life. Recently married, she was an aspiring race car driver and was well-liked by co-workers at a WaWa convenience store in Franklinville.

The crash occurred within sight of Applegate’s workplace as she attempted to turn her Ford Mustang onto Swedesboro Road from Delsea Drive. Bautista was driving an SUV at a high rate of speed in the opposite direction on Delsea Drive and struck the Applegate vehicle. Two passengers in the Bautista vehicle were also injured and he was charged with separate assault by auto counts for them.