A former Reading man who pleaded guilty this week to federal drug-trafficking charges in Connecticut still faces murder charges in a 1998 Reading drive-by shooting that investigators say targeted a rival gang member but instead killed a 24-year-old woman.
Israel Mendoza, 44, pleaded guilty Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Kari A. Dooley in Bridgeport to conspiracy to distribute, and to possess with intent to distribute, heroin and cocaine, according to a release from the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut.
Mendoza had been a fugitive until members of the U.S. Marshal’s Service and Mexican law enforcement officers took him into custody in Jaliscol, Mexico, in August 2023.
Mendoza and another fugitive, Robert Radhames-Herrera, 45, are charged in the killing of Michele Lutz, who was shot in the back at Front and Elm streets on Aug. 2, 1998, Reading police said.
Two others, Placido Rodriguez and Joshua Ramirez, pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and were each sentenced to 10 to 20 years in state prison. Ramirez was driving with the other three men as passengers, police said.
Investigators said neither Rodriguez nor Ramirez fired the shots, but they are culpable because they were engaged with the shooters in hunting a male they believed had shot one of their friends.
The shooting left Lutz’s then 4-year-old son motherless.
Mendoza was 18 at the time of the shooting. Radhames-Herrera was 20 at the time and remains at large.
In the federal drug case, a grand jury in Hartford on Oct. 31, 2019, indicted Mendoza and three others on narcotics-trafficking charges. Mendoza remained a fugitive until his arrest last year.
Officials said the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s Narcotics and Bulk Cash Trafficking Task Force in 2018 began investigating a Hartford-area narcotics-trafficking operation that was mailing parcels of drugs and drug proceeds.
Mendoza remains in custody pending sentencing in March.
Berks County District Attorney John T. Adams said Thursday that local prosecutors haven’t been able to get custody of Mendoza during his federal court case.
“We may not be able to get custody of until after his sentencing,” Adams said.
He said investigators have been working on compiling case since Mendoza was captured last year.
“As you can imagine, a case from 1998 is going to be difficult to resurrect, but we are working hard on trying to put it together,” he said.
Source: Berkshire mont
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