Police: Driver doing 100 mph in fatal New Year’s Eve crash
A driver involved in a crash that killed two women on New Year’s Eve was going faster than 100 mph on Orange Avenue before the crash, Winter Park police said.
“Let me show you what a real men’s car can do,” Justin Fonner, 28, told his passengers before accelerating his BMW in a mostly residential part of Orange Avenue, one of passengers told police.
Fonner was arrested Thursday. He faces two counts of vehicular homicide in the deaths of Geena Brigete Pabarue and Keisha Nicole Oyola Perales, both 23, and two counts of reckless driving with serious bodily injury.
Fonner and two passengers were leaving a restaurant on Mills Avenue, police said. It was about 5:45 p.m. when he turned onto Orange Avenue, made a U-turn, and accelerated, police said. He passed two signs marked with the speed limit: 35 mph.
Pabarue and Perales were in a Toyota SUV, turning left from Westchester Avenue onto Orange Avenue, police said. The BMW T-boned the Toyota, scattering car parts across the road. It sounded like a dump truck dumping tons of glass,” a witness told police.
Other drivers and residents in the area heard the crash and rushed over, records show. One driver told police she saw the SUV flip, ran toward it, and saw two women inside. They were not moving, she said.
A resident who works as a nurse told police he heard the crash and ran outside. He saw the three people in the BMW were moving and speaking, so he headed to the Toyota, police said. He asked Pabarue and Perales if they were ok, but they were motionless, he told officers. He could not find a pulse on either of them.
The two passengers in the BMW were conscious but severely injured, police said. Both were hospitalized.
When Winter Park Police Officer Jeancarlo Rojas got the airbag control module from the BMW, it showed Fonner was going 128 mph 1½ seconds before the crash. The module recorded a speed of 106 mph at impact, records show.
He is being held on no bond in the Orange County Jail.