Illegal immigrant behind Pinellas County Deputy hit-and-run killing

An illegal immigrant was discovered to have been behind Thursday’s hit-and-run killing of Pinellas County Deputy Michael Hartwick.

Police arrested 32-year-old Juan Ariel Molina-Salles after he fled from the scene. The Deputy was directing a traffic detail at a construction site at night when Molina-Salles who was driving a front-end loader struck him.

According to Sheriff Bob Gualteri, Molina-Salles might have been “going too fast.” Molina-Salles, who was going around 20MPH then fled from the scene, afraid that he killed a Deputy.

He phoned a fellow worker, Elieser Aureilio Gomez-Zelaya, told him how he killed a Deputy and allegedly told him to hide his vest and hat before fleeing on foot.

Gomez-Zelaya, also an illegal immigrant, then got rid of the items in the woods, according to the Sheriff. He has since been charged with being an accessory.

As authorities caught and confronted Molina-Salles after a 9-hour hunt, they were lied to, given a fake name and were told he was from Puerto Rico even by the workers at the site apart from Molina-Salles himself. It was only later discovered that Molina-Salles was an illegal immigrant who tried to enter the US through Eagle Pass, Texas back in October 2021 but was sent back.

It isn’t clear when he entered the US but Molina-Salles allegedly told authorities he crossed through Texas and has been in Tampa since March.

A lot of the workers at the construction site gave Police fake names and did not cooperate with the authorities to conclude the investigation, according to the Sheriff.

Molina-Salles has no qualifications to drive a front-end loader, no driver’s license, “he’s got nothing, [and] he shouldn’t have been here to begin with,” Sheriff Gualteri said. He yet succeeded in getting hired by a company after allegedly providing a fake North Carolina identity card while claiming he has construction work experience in Honduras.

Deputy Michael Hartwick was a 19-year veteran, he has left behind two adult sons. This is the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department’s second line-of-duty fatality in just 18 months of its 110-year history.

Molina-Salles has been charged with leaving a scene of a crash involving death, a first-degree felony that carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison.