Two New Jersey women walking home from a World Cup watch party Saturday night never made it. A driver raced through a Newark intersection, struck both women, sent them airborne, and kept driving. He did not stop. He did not call for help. He disappeared for three days before finally turning himself in.
Mariana Elizabeth Valverde Beltran, 58, and Maria Isabel DeLosAngeles Salgado Ayala, 61, were crossing at Park Avenue and North 7th Street in Newark when a vehicle driven by 26-year-old David J. Zapata-Vera barreled through the crosswalk. Both women were rushed to University Hospital Newark. Both were pronounced dead.
Street surveillance cameras captured the moment of impact, the New York Post reported. The footage shows a vehicle tearing through the intersection at high speed, striking the two pedestrians with enough force to launch them into the air. The driver never slowed down.
Manuel Candelaria, a witness who spoke to WABC, alleged that Zapata-Vera stepped on the accelerator and sped through the crosswalk as the traffic light was in the middle of changing. Candelaria did not confirm whether the driver was impaired, but his account left little ambiguity about what he saw.
"I don't know if he was drunk, but anyway, he put the gas and that's what happens."
That simple, devastating sentence captures what the surveillance video already showed. A man hit the gas. Two women died. And the driver vanished into the night.
Zapata-Vera, a Newark resident, did not contact police after the crash. He surrendered three days later, on Tuesday. The Essex County Prosecutor's Office charged him with six criminal counts: two counts of second-degree vehicular homicide, two counts of second-degree leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident resulting in death, and two counts of third-degree endangering an injured victim.
He is being held in Essex County jail without bond, according to jail records reviewed by the Post.
Jeffrey Chacon, a cousin of Beltran, described a family thrown into grief and scrambling to reach relatives thousands of miles away. Beltran's family members are in Ecuador, and Chacon told WABC that his father was struggling to manage his emotions while trying to contact her sisters and her son.
"My dad is managing his emotions with trying to contact everyone in Ecuador, her sisters, her son."
Chacon's words about the driver carried no rage, only a quiet, heavy reckoning. He said he hoped the person responsible would be found, but also acknowledged the weight the driver would carry. As Breitbart reported, Chacon framed it in terms of conscience.
"You have to live with this for the rest of your life. I hope the person is found but also for that person it's something you have to live with for the rest of your life, it's on your conscience."
Those remarks came before Zapata-Vera surrendered. By Tuesday, the question of whether the driver would be found was answered. The question of accountability, whether six criminal charges and a jail cell without bond amount to justice for two dead women, remains open.
The Essex County Prosecutor's Office identified the victims by name and confirmed the location of the crash. The six counts Zapata-Vera faces reflect both the act of killing and the act of running. Second-degree vehicular homicide in New Jersey carries a potential sentence of five to ten years per count. The two leaving-the-scene charges, also at the second-degree level, carry the same range. The third-degree endangering charges carry three to five years each.
Whether those charges will be prosecuted to the fullest extent is a question that matters, not just to the families of Beltran and Salgado Ayala, but to every pedestrian who walks a Newark street at night.
Newark is no stranger to violent incidents that test the resolve of its justice system. Just weeks ago, the FBI arrested a protester who allegedly threatened to kill an ICE officer's family outside a Newark detention center, a reminder that lawlessness in the city takes many forms.
Hit-and-run crashes occupy a particular category of moral failure. The initial act, striking a pedestrian, may or may not involve criminal negligence. But the decision to flee, to leave injured or dying human beings in the road without so much as a phone call, is a choice. It is a deliberate act of self-preservation at the expense of someone else's life.
In this case, Zapata-Vera had three days to consider his options. Three days while two families waited for answers. Three days while the surveillance footage circulated and witnesses spoke to reporters. Only then did he walk into a police station.
The case echoes other incidents where drivers have used vehicles as instruments of destruction. In Ohio, convicted double-murderer Mackenzie Shirilla deliberately drove her car into a wall, killing two people, a case that laid bare how vehicular violence can be just as lethal and just as deliberate as any other weapon.
Whether Zapata-Vera's actions Saturday night were deliberate, reckless, or the product of impairment remains unclear. The Essex County Prosecutor's Office has not publicly stated whether he was tested for alcohol or drugs. No toxicology results have been reported. No motive has been offered.
Several key details remain unknown. What World Cup match were the women watching? Where was the watch party relative to the crash site? What was the relationship between Beltran and Salgado Ayala, were they friends, family, neighbors? Did Zapata-Vera make any statements when he surrendered? Does he have legal representation?
None of these questions change the basic facts: two women are dead, a driver fled, and he now sits in a county jail facing six felony-level charges. But they matter for the full picture, and for the families who deserve to know everything about why their loved ones did not come home.
The broader question of public safety on Newark's streets extends well beyond one intersection. Across American cities, violent crime continues to claim lives at rates that demand serious enforcement, not symbolic gestures. Whether the threat comes from a gun or a speeding car, the obligation of the justice system is the same: hold the person responsible accountable, fully and without excuse.
Beltran and Salgado Ayala went out Saturday to enjoy a soccer match. They walked home through their own neighborhood. They stepped into a crosswalk. And a 26-year-old man decided that running a light, and then running from the consequences, mattered more than their lives.
The charges are filed. The question now is whether the system treats this case with the gravity two dead women deserve, or whether it becomes another plea-bargained footnote in a city that has seen too many.
