You know how some crime posts end with pleas seeking tips from people about an incident, even if they are left anonymously? Such a clue left with Orange County Crime Stoppers led to a Buena Park man being arrested and charged Thursday in last month's hit-and-run that killed a 44-year-old mother of eight, police said.
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Junior Rigoberto Lopez, 30, faces a felony count of hit-and-run with permanent and serious injury, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office, which adds Lopez was being held in lieu of $50,000 bail and that his arraignment hearing is pending.
Daniela Palacios was riding a bicycle to visit a friend, and may have stopped to feed homeless people as she often did, when she was hit by a white pickup truck around 9:10 p.m. on Nov. 1 near La Palma and Magnolia avenues. The truck driver stopped briefly but then drove off, police said at the time.
Palacios died around 1 a.m. on Nov. 2 at UCI Medical Center in Orange. At one point temporarily homeless, she was the mother of eight children between the ages of 9 and 28 and the grandmother to 11 kids.
The Anaheim Police Department released to the media a photo of the suspect vehicle–a white pickup truck–captured on surveillance video. The agency's spokesman, Lt. Bob Dunn, says that besides arresting Lopez Thursday morning, investigators seized his white 2013 Ford F-150 extra cab pickup.
Investigators are not seeking additional suspects, added Dunn, who credited the nonprofit Orange County Crime Stoppers with assisting in the arrest.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.