Man accused in fatal I-25 crash pleads not guilty
A man charged with vehicular homicide in a September hit-and-run in which he is accused of crashing his car into a motorcyclist and then leaving the man, a friend, to die on the roadside pleaded not guilty Thursday in state District Court in Santa Fe. Ryan Palma, 22, remains on house arrest with electronic monitoring and is scheduled to stand trial April 9 in the death of 20-year-old Emmanuel Hernandez Gonzalez. In addition to a charge of third-degree
felony vehicular homicide, Palma is charged with knowingly leaving the scene of an accident, also a third-degree felony; two counts of evidence tampering, a fourthdegree felony; and misdemeanor failure to give immediate aid.
If convicted on all counts, Palma faces up to 16 years in prison, prosecutors say.
State police say Palma was informally racing another vehicle on Interstate 25, near the La Cienega exit south of Santa Fe, at speeds of up to 90 mph late at night Sept. 23 when he plowed into Gonzalez’s motorcycle, which was traveling in the northbound lane in front of him.
The crash sent Gonzalez flying about 250 feet off the highway, according to police. His body was found six hours later.
Instead of calling 911, police have said, Palma and his passenger, Armando Alvarado, 21, continued driving the damaged car to the La Cienega exit and called someone to come pick them up.
Police and prosecutors have said Palma and Gonzalez, who lived in the same neighborhood and had many of the same friends, had been at an illegal race in the Waldo Canyon area off I-25 earlier that night, and the hit-and-run occurred as Palma and Alvarado were headed back toward Santa Fe on I-25 in an Infiniti and Gonzalez was riding a Kawasaki motorcycle ahead of them.