Court: Woman ‘drove back and forth’ over man’s body
Santa Clara 50-year-old allegedly ran down two men on Permanente Creek Trail; motive’s still unclear
SAN JOSE » New court documents allege that the Santa Clara woman who drove her Audi A5 sedan onto the Permanente Creek Trail at the Rancho San Antonio Preserve on Tuesday afternoon hit a man, then “intentionally reversed and drove back and forth over the man’s body multiple times,” killing him.
But investigators say the woman did not stop there. After the grisly rampage, which was seen by a witness and a park ranger, she allegedly tried to hit another man walking on the trail. But the man dived out of the way and shielded himself behind an oak tree.
The woman, since identified as 50-year- old Mireya Orta, continued driving recklessly through the park until Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies, dispatched to respond to the incident, followed her headed toward the park exit on Cristo Rey Drive, then drove back toward the park grounds.
When the deputies boxed her Audi in with their patrol SUVs, she crashed into one of them head-on before she ultimately was arrested.
The frantic sequence was detailed in a statement of facts submitted by the Sheriff’s Office to the District Attorney’s Office to support charges of murder, premeditated attempted murder and resisting arrest that were filed against Orta on Thursday. The first two charges involved using her car as a deadly weapon.
Orta was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon, but that was postponed until today. The Sheriff’s Office said the delay arose from a logistical conflict where her transfer from the psy
chiatric ward at the Main Jail in North San Jose to the Elmwood women’s jail came too close to the time she was supposed to be escorted to the courthouse.
Orta denied a request for a jail interview by this news organization.
Why Orta allegedly hit the two victims is still unclear. The man who was run over died about an hour later at Stanford Hospital. He has not yet been identified by the Santa Clara County Medical ExaminerCoroner’s Office pending formal identification and notification of his kin.
The victim who was able to escape was treated for abrasions on his hands and released at the scene. When reached by phone by this news organization, he declined to comment.
The Sheriff’s Office has not said whether the two victims were specifically targeted. But Sgt. Noe Cortez, the author of the summary for prosecutors, wrote that “based on the fact that witnesses saw Mireya Orta intentionally run over the victim with her black Audi sedan multiple times causing his death,” there was probable cause to recommend a murder charge against her, as well as another charge for attempting to hit the second victim.
Deputies were called to the park, located between Los Altos Hills and Cupertino at 12:52 p.m. Tuesday, for reports that a motorist had hit two people in the park.
Within about 15 minutes, deputies spotted and stopped Orta. She was described by deputies as “passive- aggressive,” but no other descriptive details about her were revealed in Cortez’s account.
Cortez also wrote that locked gates are in place at the park to prevent easy vehicle access to the trails, suggesting that the defendant could not have casually or incidentally driven onto the trail.