A family’s grief is mixed with anger after an accused drunk driver behind the wheel of an out-of-control Mercedes that fatally struck two young moped riders on a Bronx parkway was released without bail.
Mauricio Neyra Yuyes, 21, was released without bail after he was charged with DWI for the Monday morning crash that killed Enrique “Gucci” Martinez, 21, and Manuel Amarante Penalo, 19. Both victims were both thrown from their mopeds by the blistering impact.
“He’s just walking freely?” Amarante Penalo‘s 16-year-old sister said after the driver was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court. “Two people were killed. He was drunk. Think about how he took two lives. That’s not fair.”
Manuel Amarante Penalo, 19. (Obtained by Daily News)
The victim’s mother is outraged as well.
“How could they let him go?” the mother asked in Spanish. “How could they do that?”
Neyra Yuyes was hospitalized after the crash and refused a blood alcohol test, prosecutors said. He lives in White Plains, N.Y., according to cops.
He could not be reached for comment Tuesday and his lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment.
Assemblyman William Magnarelli, a Democrat who represents the Syracuse area and is chair of the Assembly’s transportation committee, has introduced legislation to roll back one of the controversial bail reform changes made to state law in 2019 and make felony DWI bail eligible.
But most DWI offenses, including Neyra Yuyes’s charges, are not felonies.
Cops initially charged Neymar Yuyes with two counts of vehicular manslaughter but the Bronx District Attorney only went forward with the DWI charges as prosecutors continue to investigate the crash. Charges could be upgraded in the future.
Cops said Neyra Yuyes was driving a black 2019 Mercedes-Benz south in the left lane on the Bronx River Parkway near E. 223rd St. when he tried to pass a white 2015 Volkswagen GTI headed in the same direction in a center lane just before 2:30 a.m.
A memorial to Manuel Amarante Penalo, 19. (Obtained by Daily News)
He struck the left rear side of the Volkswagen causing that vehicle’s driver, also 21, to lose control, veer off the roadway and strike the guardrail, according to cops.
Neyra Yuyes also lost control and struck Martinez and Penalo, friends who were riding side by side in the right lane, cops said.
When cops responded they found Neyra Yuyes near his vehicle. He raised his hand and said, “I was driving,” according to the criminal complaint against him.
A relative of Martinez said family members were not ready to talk “because the wound is still fresh.” Martinez lived in the Mount Eden section of the Bronx.
But Amarante Penalo‘s sister didn’t mince words about her brother’s death or how she feels about the Mercedes driver.
”I would tell him, ‘If I could do the same to you, I would,’” she said. “‘If I could drunk drive and hit you and kill you I would.’”
“It’s just pure anger,” she added. “If you know that’s a law, how could you even do that? There are people who have families. You even have a family. Why would you do that? You’re putting your life at risk and other people. And look at what you did. You killed two people.”
Clari said all of her brother’s friends and relatives are similarly outraged. Her brother lived with their mom in Fordham.
“All I’m gonna say is, everyone is mad,” she said. “Everyone wants revenge, so if they’re really letting him out, if they let him out already, he needs to be careful. Because there’s a lot of people that want to catch him.”
Amarante Penalo‘s family has launched a GoFundMe page to pay for funeral expenses. HIs sister spoke with other friends who were riding with the two victims when the were killed.
“They told me it was Gucci himself who told the guys, ‘Guys be careful,’ because there was a car coming mad fast,” she said. “ All of them moved away, they swerved to the other side. I don’t know how any of them didn’t get hit. They were like, it was something out of a movie.”
The impact sent her brother into the woods that line the parkway.
“”They were calling him and calling him but he wouldn’t answer,” Clari said of her brother’s friends. “They went into the woods. They were searching for a while. They couldn’t find him. When they did find him his leg was crumpled up in a tree. His leg was like caught on something on the tree. He was still alive.”
Instead of calling an ambulance, she said, they called a friend with a car, who rushed her brother to Montefiore Medical Center, where he died.
Martinez, who landed in the roadway, was rushed by medics to Jacobi Medical Center but could not be saved, cops said.
Clari described her brother as the life of the party.
“You don’t know the amount of people this man knows,” she said. “Anything he did was fun for him. He was just wanting to give anyone a smile.”
With Colin Mixson and John Annese