San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO DRAGGING, SERIOUSLY INJURING EL CAJON OFFICER
He faces nearly 10 years in prison; cop hospitalized 5 days
A man pleaded guilty Thursday to felony charges related to dragging and seriously injuring an El Cajon police officer who clung to his SUV as he sped away from a traffic stop in late 2020.
David Francis Cepeda Pangilinan, 42, faces nearly 10 years in prison when he is sentenced for dragging Officer Nick Cirello on Dec.14, 2020. His co-defendant, 29year-old Keani Flores, awaits trial.
Pangilinan pleaded guilty to all charges filed against him, including a count of assault with a deadly weapon on a peace officer.
Cirello, who was dragged for about 200 yards, sustained injuries that included major head trauma, a brain bleed and broken bones. He was hospitalized for about five days, according to El Cajon police.
The incident began when the officer responded that morning to a call for two people sleeping in an SUV that was parked in someone’s driveway on West Washington Avenue near South Magnolia Avenue, according to preliminary hearing testimony.
When the officers woke up the sleeping pair, the driver gave police a false name. At some point, he suddenly started the SUV and put it into gear as Cirello clutched the open window.
During the preliminary hearing, Deputy District Attorney Clayton Carr said the SUV was traveling around 70 mph when Cirello fell from the vehicle. Flores is accused of removing Cirello’s hands from the SUV’S window frame, causing him to fall from the vehicle.
Flores’ attorney, Vikas Bajaj, denied that his client tried to get Cirello to let go of the window, arguing she “was a passenger who was literally along for the ride.”
The SUV, a rented Volkswagen Atlas, was found abandoned a short time after the officer was dragged. According to testimony, the pair ditched the SUV near an El Cajon resident’s home, told the resident their car had broken down and asked him to call a cab for them.
A week later, police tracked the pair to Oakhurst, a small, sparsely populated town in the Sierra Nevada foothills, about 14 miles south of the entrance to Yosemite National Park. But when officers spotted Pangilinan and tried to pull him over, “he fled and evaded apprehension,” El Cajon police said at the time.
Later that same day, El Cajon detectives and members of a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive task force arrested Flores at an Oakhurst motel.
Pangilinan, for whom a judge had issued a $5 million warrant, remained at large for nearly a month until Jan. 10, 2021, when Los Angeles police arrested him.